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THE TRAGEDY AT THE 
BEACH CLUB 


Mtlliani Jobnston 

The Mystery in the Ritsmore 
The Apartment Next Door 
The House of Whispers 
Limpy 

The Boy Who Felt Neglected 
The Yellow Letter 
The Tragedy at the Beach Club 






IIE FOUND HIMSELF GAZING INTO THE BLACK, LIMPID, FRIGHTENED 
EYES OF A PRETTY ITALIAN GIRL. 

Frontispiece. See page 142. 


X 


THE TRAGEDY AT 
THE BEACH CLUB 


By 

WILLIAM JOHNSTON 


WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 

MARSHALL FRANTZ 


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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1922 


Copyright, 1922 , 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 


All rights reserved 

Published February, 1922 


Printed in the United 


States of America 





X 


FEB 28 1922 

§)CI. A654782 



CONTENTS 


I. Watching Eyes 3 

II. Morning’s Revelations . . .16 

III. Pointing Fingers .... 35 

IV. The First Secret . . . .55 

V. A New Mystery . . . .73 

VI. Several Surprises . . . .91 

VII. In the Morning Mail . . . 104 

VIII. Ground for Suspicion . . .120 

IX. A Mysterious Intruder . . .135 

X. An Error in Judgment . . .150 

XI. A Theory Shattered . . .167 

XII. Missing — A Motive . . . .182 

XIII. A New Alliance .... 19 8 

XIV. A Plan that Failed . . . .214 

XV. Indisputable Proof . . . .230 

XVI. An Outcome Unexpected . . . 246 

XVII. Two Discoveries . . . .261 







THE TRAGEDY AT THE 
BEACH CLUB 









































' 

























































































THE TRAGEDY AT THE 
BEACH CLUB 


CHAPTER I 

WATCHING EYES 

On, on, through the night, there sped relentlessly 
a little roadster, its solitary occupant dust-begrimed 
and bearing marks of weariness as if from a long 
journey, yet apparently grimly determined to reach 
some fixed goal within a given time. 

On several occasions as the car stopped while its 
occupant inquired the way, invariably the person 
addressed turned to stare wonderingly after the de- 
parting traveler. In the motorist’s face was a 
strange, inscrutable expression, a look indicative of 
some fixed, definite purpose, almost a maniacal glare 
that seemed to portray an intense purpose to carry 
out some great resolve, cost what it might. 

Presently the car, after its occupant had once 
more inquired the directions, turned off the main 


4 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

thoroughfare and began proceeding more slowly, 
as if there were need for caution over a less- 
traveled road. 

At the same hour, hardly half a mile distant, 
there crept through a narrow strip of woods that 
lined the Sound a sinister figure, intent on avoiding 
observation, a figure whose eyes were blazing with 
resentment, hate, despair, a figure moving swiftly 
yet silently, slipping noiselessly from cover behind 
one tree to another, but all the while persistently 
advancing toward a goal on the shore that was 
marked by a blaze of lights and the sound of merry 
voices. 

In the same locality, too, had one an all-seeing 
vision that could read the innermost hearts of men, 
there would have been noted two men, ostensibly 
friends, mingling in a reveling throng, their 
thoughts masked behind smiling faces ; two men, — 
one possessed by a great fear, and the other by con- 
suming wrath. 

Yet surely no one, however prophetic his vision 
or however psychic his gifts, looking, on that peace- 
ful June night, at the pretty scene in our little club 
— the Beach Club, we call it — could possibly have 


WATCHING EYES 


5 


suspected the presence there of the grisly shadow of 
Tragedy as, entirely unobserved, it crept closer — 
and closer — and closer. 

The pleasant picture the clubhouse presented 
might have been duplicated at any one of the hun- 
dred summer colonies about New York, — a cluster 
of matrons, cool in sport clothes, ranged along the 
wall of the ballroom floor, placidly chatting of new 
crochet stitches, servants’ wages, recent plays, en- 
gaged couples, thoroughly enjoying in their own 
mature fashion the tittle-tattle of a friendly com- 
munity, as they occasionally turned observant 
maternal glances to the dancing floor to see how 
their daughters were behaving and which of the men 
they were getting as dancing partners. In the card 
room adjoining, the club’s four inveterates, Pressly 
Hart, Doctor Rhodes, John Dixon and Ed Man- 
ners, as usual, were wrangling over half-cent auc- 
tion, their rank swelled on this, the weekly dance 
night, by a sufficient number of husbands and fa- 
thers to make three other tables. A few more of 
the older men sat placidly smoking in the piazza 
rockers. 

And elsewhere — everywhere — was Youth — 


6 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

youth in couples, with some few of the newly mar- 
ried folk, foxtrotting jerkily to “Vamp a Little 
Lady,” gliding gracefully, even if perspiringly, to 
the subtler strains of “ The Blue Danube,” and be- 
tween dances cooling off in merry groups on the 
wide piazzas where they could watch the moon- 
beams cut sparkling capers on the wide waters of 
the Sound. 

Of all places in the world assuredly this little 
friendly, happy club at Rockmont seemed the most 
unlikely setting for a great tragedy. The families 
represented — there were hardly fifty of them — 
had been coming to the place, all of them, for years. 
They were, without exception, of the more prosper- 
ous, untemperamental, wholesome middle class, 
most of them owning their own cottages and all of 
them their own cars. Their boys and girls had 
grown up together. Every one in the place knew 
everything there was to know about everybody else, 
or — until this night of tragedy — had thought 
they did. 

An air of good fellowship, of neighborly feeling, 
seemed to pervade the whole club, and among the 
dancers as they chatted there was that frank 


WATCHING EYES 


7 

camaraderie and pleasant chaffing only possible 
a'mong tried acquaintances. 

“ Poor old Bill,” a laughing girl taunted her part- 
ner — he was under thirty — “ you men, as you 
get old, get dreadfully soft.” 

“ This to me,” he retorted, “ when Pve already 
danced three times with you this sweltering night.” 

“ I didn’t mean that. That’s harder on me than 
on you, for you never will learn to dance, but ” 

“ But what? ” 

She hesitated a trifle before answering. 

“ None of you men seem to have any pep these 
days.” 

“ Meaning which ? ” 

“ I can’t find a single man to get up at six to- 
morrow to play tennis with me.” 

“ Try a married one. They’re easier.” 

“ Don’t get fresh, Bill Tilt. You’re not half as 
game as you used to be when we were kids to- 
gether.” 

“ I’m a business man now. I haven’t time for 
childish follies.” 

“ To-morrow’s Saturday,” she challenged him. 
“ You don’t go to business Saturdays.” 


8 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


• “ Think how hard I work the other five days 
while you girls out here do nothing but play around 
all day and have a good time. ,, 

“ A good time,” she echoed scornfully. “ I 
wish you had a week of it — nothing to do all day 
long and not a man to talk to until the six-eighteen 
gets in. Please, Bill, won’t you ? ” 

“ Why pick on me ? ” he replied almost peevishly. 
“ Rout Carew out to play with you.” 

“ Paul Carew’s an engaged man,” she replied, 
coloring prettily at this mention of her fiance’s 
name. “ He has to work Saturdays. It becomes 
him to take life seriously, when he’ll soon have a 
wife to support.” 

Mollie Manners’ engagement to Carew, an- 
nounced three weeks before, had been the summer’s 
sensation in the colony. Carew was a comparative 
stranger. At the close of the war he had been 
brought to Rockmont as a guest by a fellow officer 
who had known him in France. Each summer 
since he had returned, living at the Inn in the vil- 
lage, enthusiastically joining in the sports, mingling 
freely with all the young people, in the course of the 
season being entertained at least once for dinner in 


WATCHING EYES 


9 


most of the houses, meanwhile carrying on his 
courtship of Mollie with such craft that no one had 
suspected his intention until the announcement of 
their betrothal. 

To most of them it had come as a complete sur- 
prise, and to Bill Tilt as a shock. He felt that he 
had been or was about to be deprived of a good 
playmate. Sometimes, when he was alone and 
began to think about it, he wished he had proposed 
to Mollie himself. Life without her, he felt, 
would be strangely lonesome, almost unbearable. 

“ If I were engaged to you,” he snapped, “ even if 
I did have to go to business, I'd get up at six for 
you.” 

“ Paul wanted to,” she answered proudly, “ but 
I wouldn't let him.” 

“ What's the big idea, anyhow?” growled Tilt. 
“ Why this early stuff? ” 

“ It’s the tournament. I'm just crazy to get in 
a lot of practise and surprise everybody. I'm out 
for the cup in the ladies' singles. Besides, it's 
lovely and cool early in the morning, and we’ll have 
the courts all to ourselves. Please, Bill, won't you — 
pretty please ? ” 


10 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


Into her great dark eyes came a pleading look, a 
soft, alluring look that Tilt had never been able to 
withstand, and her concluding phrase, the “ pretty 
please ” brought back to his mind with a rush viv- 
idly pleasant memories of their merry times to- 
gether — long before Carew had come — when they 
were just boy and girl together. 

“ All right, all right ! ” he cried, as the music 
stopped, holding up his hands in mock token of sur- 
render, as the couples about them applauded vigor- 
ously for an encore. 

“ Remember, six sharp,” she warned him, as 
they stood waiting a moment. 

The music started up again. Tilt, lowering his 
hands, was about to encircle her waist again, when 
Carew cut in and swept her away. 

“ I’ll be waiting on the courts for you,” she 
called back smilingly over her shoulder, as Tilt, re- 
sentful and disgruntled, abandoned the dancing and 
sought solace in a cigarette in solitude on the veran- 
dah. 

On went the dancing, the gossip, the bridge, and 
closer and yet closer crept the sinister shadow of 
tragedy, still with no warning of its coming unless 


WATCHING EYES 11 

some one might have observed, peering furtively in 
from a back window — a window that looked out on 
a sort of court where the cars were parked — two 
frightened eyes that roved the ballroom as if in 
search of something or some one. Presently, if 
any one had been watching closely, they might have 
seen the eyes stop and tighten and have noticed 
creeping into them a strange set expression of — 
what was it — hate or hopelessness. But only for 
a fleeting instant were the watching eyes visible. 
As quickly as they had appeared, they vanished 
again, the outer darkness swallowing up their 
owner before any one of the dancers had noticed 
the occurrence. 

Otherwise there was no hint of the unusual, no 
foreshadowing of the terrible, no warning of the 
dreadful, mysterious tragedy that before the morn- 
ing would cast its gloom on all the merry dancers, 
would wreck the happiness of some, would shatter 
lifelong friendships and would spread its poison 
through the whole community. 

Unconscious of the sword above their heads, the 
merry assemblage danced on. Peace, contentment 
and the joy of living was theirs. Even from the 


12 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


faces of the men at the card tables the evening's 
pastime seemed to have wiped away the worry lines 
of business cares. So far as any one could see, it 
was a perfect picture of a happy, carefree com- 
munity. 

All too soon came twelve o'clock and the good- 
night dance. The matrons, for the most part trust- 
fully leaving their daughters to be escorted home by 
boy friends, gathering up their wraps, invaded the 
card room in a body to stand firmly united against 
husbandly please for “ just one more rubber." In 
a very few minutes the club entrance was thronged 
with the departing and noisy with merry “ good 
nights." 

Paul Carew, as usual, was waiting for Mollie as 
she emerged from the cloakroom, and many a glance 
was bestowed on them as they stood there together. 
Physically they seemed an ideal couple for mating. 
Dark-eyed, slender, her masses of auburn hair al- 
ways were kept trim and shining. Slim-ankled and 
dainty, her bared arms, softly rounded though they 
were, had the brown of the athlete, and her pretty 
face glowed with health and good nature, though 
her square chin indicated that on occasion she could 


WATCHING EYES 


*3 


display a mind and will of her own. Generally she 
gave the impression of being a tall girl, but the man 
beside her towered a good six inches above her. If 
ever there had been a tendency on his part to slouch 
over, it had been remedied by his army service. He 
stood there straight and erect, blond as she was dark. 
His well-fitting dinner coat gave to his shoulders 
perhaps undeserved breadth, and a captious critic 
might have considered his lips a trifle loose, with- 
out being able to dispute the fact that he was a 
handsome man. Though he was undoubtedly Amer- 
ican-born, there was something about his face — 
perhaps his rather large, aquiline nose, perhaps the 
expression of his gray-green eyes — that gave most 
persons on first meeting him a feeling that some- 
where in his pedigree was a considerable strain of 
alien blood. At any rate he appeared well-bred and 
cultured, and it was generally understood in the 
colony that he was an electrical engineer, who 
after Amherst had taken a course at Cornell 
which he had completed just before entering the 
army. Apparently, too, he had some means besides 
his profession, for he lived comfortably and kept a 
car. Mollie Manners, too, the colony knew, had a 


14 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

small income of her own, so altogether the match 
was considered a suitable one. 

“ Mollie, dear,” Carew whispered, drawing her a 
little apart from the others, “ would you mind it very 
much if I didn’t go home with you to-night — if you 
went on with the family? ” 

“ What is it?” she cried, scanning his face 
solicitously. “ Are you ill ?” 

“ Not at all,” he laughed reassuringly. 

“ You’re sure? ” 

“ Quite. It’s just some business.” 

“ Business at this hour of the night ! ” her eyes 
sought the clock. “ It’s long after twelve.” 

“ It’s some papers,” he explained nervously, 
“ something I have to get fixed up before morning. 

Something ” he hesitated for just a second, 

“ something I promised to attend to.” 

“ Oh,” she said, “ of course that is different. I 
don’t mind in the least. Only, Paul dear, don’t 
stay up too late.” 

“ Don’t worry,” he replied, “ I shan’t.” 

Perplexedly her eyes sought his. Despite his 
reassuring words, there was something in his man- 
ner, a nervousness, something — she could hardly 


WATCHING EYES 


5 


describe it — that seemed strange and different about 
him. She feared that he might be feeling ill and 
was keeping it from her. Or perhaps it was some 
business worry ? What could it be ? It was unlike 
him to be upset about business, yet she noticed that 
his hand as he clasped her was trembling and 
clammy. Once again she raised her eyes question- 
ingly to his. 

Unmindful of the crowd about them, with an ac- 
cepted lover’s daring, he bent and kissed her lightly 
on the lips, then springing lightly into his car, 
dashed away in the direction of the Inn, both he and 
Mollie utterly unconscious that the eyes of at least 
three persons who had witnessed their parting kiss, 
two of them in the clubhouse, and a third person 
hidden in the black shadows outside, had sent after 
Carew, departing, frowning, unfriendly, bitter 
glances. 

And closer, and still closer, crept Tragedy. 


CHAPTER II 

MORNING’S REVELATIONS 

All too early for Tilt came Saturday morning. 
Returning from the club dance shortly after mid- 
night, he had retired immediately, but not to sleep. 
The thought that he must be up again by six was 
far from being a soporific, and besides all through 
the hours he had been haunted and harassed by 
visions of Mollie. There kept recurring to his 
mind, distastefully and annoyingly, the picture she 
had made in their last dance together, a picture 
rudely shattered by the masterful, proprietary way 
in which Paul Carew had swept her away from him. 

“ Damn Carew,” he muttered to himself, “ I 
wish he never had turned up here.” 

Hitherto Tilt, with no thought of matrimony, 
with no conscious feeling of love toward his old 
playmate, had been content to drift along in the 
pleasant sunshine of her companionship. Now, as 
the prospect loomed closer and closer of her be- 
coming another man’s wife, he realized, with poign- 


MORNING'S REVELATIONS 17 

ant regret, that he loved Mollie Manners, that he 
always had loved her. 

He was in a savage mood as he left his home and 
hurried along the beach toward the courts, swinging 
his racquet viciously at the nodding daisies along 
his path. Yet it was hard to be ill-tempered on such 
a morning as this with the prospects of having two 
hours alone with Mollie. As the cool sea air, with 
its pleasant, elusive tang, struck his face and filled 
his lungs, his mood quickly softened. 

Mollie was right, he decided. It was wonderful 
in the early morning. The sun, coming up behind 
Little Island, was cutting a golden path across the 
Sound’s incoming tide. The sea birds, busy with 
breakfast, were fluttering about everywhere, a horde 
of hungry gulls, like scout planes, watching each 
wave crest for floating dainties, croaking their dis- 
satisfaction as they sailed along, while in the shal- 
lows of the cove the silent cranes hopped about with 
grotesque dignity, seeking unwary fish. From the 
leafy shelters of the woods near by came the rau- 
cous notes of the crows, the trill of robins and the 
mischievous cries of catbirds. 

Tilt was hardly five minutes in reaching the 


18 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


courts, and as he arrived he looked about with a 
feeling of triumph. Early as it was, apparently he 
had been the first to arrive. He hurried on a little 
farther to a place commanding a view of Lloyd’s 
Point, confidently expecting to see Mollie racing 
toward him, but she was nowhere in sight. For a 
moment he felt puzzled. It was not at all like her 
to be late. Some girls he knew would have con- 
sidered it a great joke to date a man for six o’clock 
and then keep him waiting for half an hour, but 
Mollie was not that sort. Brought up among boys, 
it was her custom always to be prompt in keeping 
engagements. 

It occurred to him then that she might already 
have arrived and be in the clubhouse getting her 
racquet or putting on her tennis shoes. Sometimes 
in the years gone by, when they used to have these 
early engagements more frequently, he recalled that 
she had been in the habit of stopping at the care- 
taker’s cottage for the key and opening up the club- 
house. Probably that was where she was now. 

As he turned back and approached the building, 
he saw what he had not noticed before, — that the 
door was standing ajar. His conclusions thus veri- 


MORNINGS REVELATIONS 19 

fied, he started for the steps, his lips shaping them- 
selves into a cheery call to announce his arrival, but 
he stopped short in his tracks. 

From somewhere — it seemed to him from within 
the clubhouse — there came a shrill, unforgettable, 
prolonged scream, like the cry of some person or 
animal in mortal agony, a terrifying, unearthly 
sound, such as it seemed hardly possible for any hu- 
man being to make. 

What was it? What did it mean? What could 
have happened? 

Bewildered by the amazing scream, he stopped 
for a second and stood there listening, half expect- 
ing to hear the cry repeated. Strangely enough, at 
first no thought of Mollie came into his head. The 
cry he had heard had not sounded in the least like 
her voice, and at any rate he knew that she was not 
the sort of girl given to shrieking or screaming. 
He was not even sure that the sound had come from 
the clubhouse. There was a muffled quality about it 
as if it might have come from some distance away, 
perhaps from one of the yachts at anchor a quarter 
of a mile away. 

But Mollie — where was she ? 


20 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


She must be somewhere about, probably in the 
clubhouse. He must find her at once. If she had 
heard that scream, it undoubtedly would have 
alarmed her. Suppose something had happened to 
her, something dreadful? With his heart in his 
throat, he took the steps two at a time and made for 
the open door, all sorts of wild imaginings filling 
his brain. 

If Mollie were in there, who could be with her? 
He knew the building now was untenanted at night. 
Two weeks ago the steward had been discharged 
for stealing, and his place had not yet been filled. 
Old Hodder, who looked after the boats, kept the 
key at his shack down on the beach. The last to 
leave at night snapped the spring lock on the door, 
and the first to arrive stopped at old Hodder’s and 
got the key. Striving vainly to conjecture what 
might have happened, with his alarm for Mollie’s 
safety increasing, he made for the door, but before 
he reached it he heard steps — some one coming to- 
ward him — some one running — running fast. In- 
stinctively his muscles stiffened, and his fists 
clinched. If any one was in there, if any one had 
harmed or had frightened Mollie 


MORNING'S REVELATIONS 21 


It was Mollie herself. 

She dashed out of the place as if all the devils in 
hell were after her. She was neither shrieking nor 
crying, but her breath was coming in short, quick 
gasps that seemed almost to choke her, and in her 
eyes was the most fear stricken look that Tilt had 
ever seen. 

“ Mollie,” he cried, putting out his arms, “ what’s 
happened ? What’s the matter ? ” 

She seemed not even to have seen him. With 
her eyes staring, with that look of dreadful horror 
still in them, she ran right on, straight past him as 
he attempted to seize her. 

“ Mollie ! ” he cried again, but she paid no atten- 
tion and kept on running, running as fast as she 
could in the direction of her own home. 

Puzzled beyond measure, utterly at a loss to 
understand what could have terrified her so, Tilt 
dashed after her. Although in his college days he 
had been on the track team and even now prided 
himself on his speed, run as fast as he could he was 
unable to catch up with her. She ran madly on and 
on, making no sound except that queer, choking 
gasp. He was just behind her as she reached home 


22 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


and dashed up the front steps and through the door 
into the living room. Seeming even in her hysteria 
to realize that she was at home and safe, she gave 
a little cry — something that sounded to Tilt like 
“ Mother ” — and fell in a senseless heap to the 
floor. 

It had not seemed to Tilt that they had made 
much noise as they entered the house, but there must 
have been more than he imagined for as he bent 
over Mollie, Kit — the Terrible Kit — Mollie’s 
younger sister, came flying down the stairs in her 
pyjamas, her bobbed black hair all tousled from the 
pillow. She stopped short on the landing as she 
saw Tilt and her sister lying on the floor, let out a 
shriek and dashed back upstairs. In half a second 
the whole house was in commotion. Mrs. Manners 
and Mollie’s brother Ed and the servants, in various 
stages of deshabille, ran into the living room. Mrs. 
Manners was the only one who seemed to have kept 
her head. Without saying a word, she got a pillow 
under her daughter and began trying with brandy 
and smelling salts to revive her. The others, 
crowding around the bewildered Tilt, all began ask- 
ing at once what had happened. 


MORNING’S REVELATIONS 23 

The Terrible Kit, reappearing in a kimono, 
pushed past the others and shaking her fist in Tilt’s 
face, tragically screamed out: 

“ What have you done to my sister? ” 

Tilt, as soon as he could get them somewhat 
calmed down, told them all he knew about it, which 
of course was practically nothing. 

“ Mollie has been badly frightened,” said Mrs. 
Manners, looking up from her task. " She must 
have seen somebody or something in the clubhouse. 
Bill, why don’t you and Ed go down there and in- 
vestigate? Some tramps may have got into the 
clubhouse. But, Ed, before you go, I wish you’d 
telephone Doctor Rhodes to come over.” 

Ed, still in his bathrobe, went at once to the 
’phone, which was in an alcove just off the living 
room, where every one could hear what he said. He 
had some trouble in getting the number, as invari- 
ably is the case when you try to get a surburban 
number in the early morning, and when he did, they 
gathered from what he was saying that Doctor 
Rhodes was not at home. At that both Mrs. Man- 
ners and Tilt exchanged surprised glances, for 
Rhodes had been at the club the night before. 


24 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

Walter Rhodes was a specialist in the city and had 
no local practise, never answering calls except in 
emergency cases to oblige old friends like the Man- 
ners family, so it seemed unaccountable that he 
should not be at home at this early hour. 

“ Rhodes is out,” said Ed, turning away from the 
’phone, “ and his old housekeeper is all worked up 
about it. She doesn’t know where he is. She says 
some one called him on the ’phone about one in the 
morning, and he went out and hasn’t showed up 
since. She’s afraid something has happened to 
him.” 

“ That’s funny,” said Tilt, “ I never heard of his 
answering night calls.” 

“ He never did,” Ed replied, “ but wherever he 
went, he didn’t take his car. The housekeeper says 
it is in the garage.” 

“ Try to get Doctor Burroughs from the village, 
then,” suggested Mrs. Manners. 

Doctor Burroughs was at home and promised to 
come at once. Mollie by this time had revived a 
little, although she was by no means herself yet. 
She kept moving her head hysterically from side to 
side, and once in a while she gave a little moan. 


MORNING’S REVELATIONS 25 

“ If you boys will carry her upstairs,” said her 
mother, “ she’ll be better off in bed.” 

“ Wait a second till I slip on some clothes,” said 
Ed, as they complied with Mrs. Manners’ request, 
“ and we’ll run down and see what’s wrong at the 
club.” 

A moment later, just as he and Tilt was starting 
off, the Terrible Kit, still in her kimono, came rush- 
ing downstairs after them. 

“ You go back,” her brother commanded sternly. 
“ There’s no telling what we may find. It’s no 
place for a kid.” 

“ She’s as much my sister as she is yours,” said 
Kit stubbornly, “ and I have a right to know what 
happened to her.” 

There seemed to be no way of stopping the deter- 
mined young flapper without appealing to her 
mother, and they did not wish to add to Mrs. 
Manners’ troubles just then; but Tilt put in a word 
of advice. 

“ Better stay home, Kit. We may find a bunch 
of tough tramps down there.” 

“Who’s afraid of tramps,” scoffed Kit, “when 
she has two big men along to protect her.” 


26 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“Do you think it was tramps ?” asked Ed of 
Tilt. 

“ Some vagrant might have taken a notion to 
camp in the clubhouse. ,, 

“ It could happen easily enough, but I doubt if 
we find anything at all. Girls get like that some- 
times, sort of timid and scary, all upset about noth- 
ing at all. Mollie, alone in the clubhouse at that 
hour of the morning, probably thought she saw 
something or thought she heard something and went 
off into hysterics.” 

“ No,” Tilt defended her warmly, “ Mollie isn’t 
that sort at all. She’s as cool headed as a man and 
has a lot of nerve. Remember that time I was in 
the motor smash-up with her, she never turned a 
hair — didn’t even cry out when they crashed into 
us.” 

“ ’Sright,” said Kit, “ Mollie’s just like me. 
We’re neither of us afraid of anything.” 

Nevertheless, as they approached the clubhouse, 
the Terrible Kit sidled shyly up to Tilt and 
slipped her hand into his as if to give herself 
courage. Even the two men, while certainly not 
frightened, approached the little building with a 


MORNING’S REVELATIONS 27 

nervous air of expectation, perhaps of premoni- 
tion. 

They found the door standing wide open, just as 
it had been when Mollie ran out, and together the 
three of them went in. Right at the entrance was 
the reception room, such a room as is common to all 
small clubs of this sort, — mission furniture, some 
sporting prints and standing about on shelves some 
“ maybe they are silver ” cups and trophies. 
Nothing was out of place in this room that any of 
them could observe. At the left the dancing floor 
was visible in its entirety through an uncurtained 
archway. On their right a passageway led to the 
lockers, and on one side of this was a big room used 
as a card room. Across the corridor from the card 
room were two smaller rooms, one — now locked — 
used as the steward’s sleeping quarters when they 
had a steward and the other as a meeting room for 
the club’s governors. 

“Let’s go down toward the women’s lockers,” 
suggested Tilt. “That’s probably the direction 
Mollie took as she came in.” 

“ Right,” said Ed, leading the way with Tilt and 
Kit close at his heels. 


28 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

They glanced into the card room but there was no 
one there, and they were hurrying on down toward 
the lockers, when Tilt felt Kit’s hand tighten con- 
vulsively on his. 

“ Oh, look ! ” she breathed in a horrified whisper. 

Both men stopped short and turned at once to 
peer in the direction of her frightened glance. 

“ My God,” cried Ed Manners, “ what’s this ? ” 

He turned to his sister and seizing her almost 
roughly by the shoulders thrust her back. 

“ Get out of here,” he commanded. “ This is no 
place for you.” 

“ I won’t,” said Kit stubbornly, even though her 
face was white, and the hand with which she was 
clutching Tilt’s was trembling violently. “ It’s 
Doctor Rhodes.” 

At a table in the second of the smaller rooms off 
the corridor was Walter Rhodes, sitting, or rather 
sprawling grotesquely. His head rested on the 
table, and his arms dangled loosely, lifelessly at his 
sides, while on the floor, almost at his feet, lay a 
revolver. 

“ It doesn’t seem possible,” cried Ed, “ but it 
certainly looks as if Rhodes had killed himself.” 


MORNING’S REVELATIONS 29 

“ No wonder Mollie had hysterics,” said Tilt, 
picturing to himself the shock it must have been to 
her when she discovered the body, for Rhodes had 
been one of her dearest friends. 

For a moment the three of them stood, spell- 
bound with horror, looking into the room. There 
was nothing to indicate that there had been a fight 
or a struggle, nothing to hint of the presence of an 
intruder, except for the fact that a window on the 
Sound side stood open. Whoever was last to leave 
the club generally closed all the windows, but this 
one could easily have been overlooked, or for that 
matter Rhodes himself might have opened it before 
he took his seat at the table. 

“ I can’t believe that it’s suicide,” said Tilt firmly. 
“ There’s some mystery about this. Rhodes isn’t 
the sort to have killed himself. He could not have 
had any motive. He was in splendid health, doing 
big work and making plenty of money. What 
reason could he have had ? ” 

“ Who knows,” said Manners. “ Perhaps it was 
some woman ” 

“ Hardly at his age. He was well over fifty.” 

Manners stepped into the room and, picking up 


30 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

the revolver, broke it, and exhibited it to his com- 
panions. 

“ I guess that settles it,” he said. “ See, there’s 
one bullet discharged.” 

“ I can’t believe it,” Tilt repeated. “ Rhodes 
wasn’t the sort. There was nothing of the quitter 
about him.” 

“If he didn’t kill himself, how else do you ac- 
count for it ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ At any rate, we’ve got to do something — no- 
tify the police, or the coroner or somebody.” 

“ What’s the matter with letting Pressly Hart 
attend to that? He’s president of the club.” 

“ That’s a good idea. We’ll ’phone him.” 

As he spoke, Manners lifted the doctor’s head and 
straightened his body back in the chair. 

“ Don’t,” Tilt warned him. “We ought to leave 
everything just as it is until the authorities arrive.” 

“ Of course, but what I did will not hurt anything 
or destroy any clues, if there are any. It seemed a 
shame to leave him in that uncomfortable position.” 

“What’s that?” the excited, shrill voice of the 
Terrible Kit interrupted. 


MORNING’S REVELATIONS 31 


In their excitement over the tragedy, both of the 
men had forgotten about her. She was still stand- 
ing in the doorway. Her bright eyes blazing with 
excitement, she was pointing to the spot on the table 
where the doctor’s head had been lying. There was 
a piece of paper lying there with something written 
on it. Eagerly Tilt picked it up and together he 
and Manners examined it. It was a sheet torn 
from one of Rhodes’s own prescription pads, and on 
it in the doctor’s handwriting were these words: 


WALTER RHODES, M. D. 




The writing ended abruptly, the line of the last 



32 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

letter jerking sharply up as if a bullet might have 
stopped his hand as he wrote. What could it mean ? 
Would a man stop in the middle of a sentence to 
kill himself? There was bewilderment in the 
puzzled glances the two men exchanged. The find- 
ing of the unfinished note had put an entirely dif- 
ferent complexion on the tragedy. Into the mind 
of both came what his housekeeper had said, about 
some one having telephoned him after midnight and 
his having gone out. Manifestly he must have 
come here to the club to meet some one, — some one 
for whom he had waited. 

Whom had he expected to meet? Was it a man 
or a woman? Could it have been possible that 
Rhodes, all unsuspected, was involved in an affair, 
and that he had been lured here and shot down by 
some jealous husband? Or had there been some 
one who had plotted to take his life from some other 
motive, — robbery, revenge, perhaps from sheer 
madness through brooding over some fancied 
wrong. 

Carefully Manners laid the little scrap of paper 
back in the exact spot from which Tilt had picked 
it up. 


MORNINGS REVELATIONS 33 

“ It's too deep for me,” he said. “ I guess we 
had better telephone Hart.” 

Together the three of them left the room, return- 
ing down the corridor to the telephone in the recep- 
tion hall. As Tilt was calling up, Manners turned 
to his sister. 

“ Look here, Kit,” he said, “ you get out of here 
quick. The first thing you know, you’ll be dragged 
into court in a murder case. Anyhow, in a very 
few minutes there’ll be a lot of people here, and you 
don’t want them to catch you looking like that.” 

It is hard to say which of his arguments it was 
that appealed to the youngster, but at any rate she 
reluctantly withdrew. After talking over the 
’phone with Hart, Manners and Tilt, left alone, re- 
turned once more along the corridor to where the 
body lay. 

“ What do you make of it? ” asked Tilt. 

“ It certainly is mysterious. Looks like murder.” 

“ But who would want to murder Walter 
Rhodes ? ” 

“ I give it up.” 

“ It seems to me,” said Tilt thoughtfully, “ if we 
can find out who it was that telephoned him late 


4 


34 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

last night, if we can discover to whom the message 
he was writing was addressed, if we can find out 
for whom he was waiting there, we’ll come pretty 
near locating the man that killed him.” 

“ Or the woman,” suggested Manners. 

“ What makes you ” began Tilt, but his 

question died in his throat. 

As they talked, they had come once more to the 
door of the room where the body was. At their 
first glance within they had halted abruptly, gaping 
at the table in stupefied astonishment. 

The paper — the unfinished message that Man- 
ners had laid so carefully back in its place — the 
paper that both had considered so important a clue 
to the murderer of Walter Rhodes — had vanished. 


CHAPTER III 
POINTING FINGERS 

The inquest was on. Apart from the morbid, 
curious excited throng of summer residents, of vil- 
lagers, of officials, already gathered on the dancing 
floor of the club, paying little heed to any of them, 
as he leaned against a pillar of the porch outside, 
was old Hodder, a far away look in his eyes. 

A score of things about him marked him for a 
follower of the sea, — his wind-beaten face, his 
shirt wide open, revealing his tanned hairy neck, his 
up-rolled sleeves, the sea symbols tattooed boldly on 
both forearms, the hitch of his trousers, the roll of 
his walk, the tilt of his cap. Indeed, with his long, 
gray, tobacco-stained mustache and his beady black 
eyes, given another setting, it would not have been 
in the least difficult to imagine him as a pirate, an 
adventurer, but to thoughtless Rockmont, now as 
always he was just “ Old Hodder who looks after 
the boats.” 


36 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

He was muttering to himself as he stood there. 

“ It must have been her that got him. She vowed 
she would. It must have been her.” 

Within the clubhouse the inquest proceeded, the 
County physician, Doctor Dooner, presiding with 
bustling dignity. One of those incompetent medi- 
cal men, too lazy or too careless to build up a paying 
practise, he had turned to politics as a way out of 
his rut, and now keenly alive to the possibilities of 
publicity for himself in such a mysterious affair as 
this, was enjoying to the utmost the part he had to 
play in it 

The two most important witnesses, Manners and 
Tilt, had been informed by him that they would be 
the first ones called, and already they were sitting 
uneasily in chairs in the front row facing the jury. 
Although it was now nearly twelve, more than five 
hours since they had ’phoned the news to Pressly 
Hart, they had hardly had a minute to themselves. 
The celerity with which the news had spread had 
amazed them both. Close on Hart’s heels had 
come the curious throng, with the village police 
chief — he was Smithers, the grocer — everybody, 
crowding around them, demanding over and over 


POINTING FINGERS 


37 


again to be told about the discovery of Walter 
Rhodes’s body. By tacit understanding, neither of 
them had mentioned Mollie’s part in the affair, both 
devoutly hoping that her name could be kept entirely 
out of it. 

It wasn’t until Doctor Dooner began impaneling 
the jury that they had had the opportunity for a 
quiet word together. 

“ Bill,” whispered Manners, “ what did you do 
with that paper — that message that Rhodes was 
writing? ” 

“ Me ! ” cried Tilt, in an astonished whisper. “ I 
didn’t touch it again. I thought sure you had it.” 

Appraisingly, almost suspiciously, they studied 
each other’s faces. Hitherto the best of friends, 
enjoying the mutual confidence in each other that 
long years of pleasant acquaintance invariably 
brings, the grisly figure of murder had risen between 
them, spreading on either side suspicion, distrust. 
Simultaneously into the minds of each had flashed 
the thought that the other had secreted the paper, 
fearing it might involve or incriminate some one he 
knew. 

“ I didn’t take it,” said Manners. “ I put it back 


38 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

in exactly the spot where it was when you picked 
it up.” 

“ Where is it then? ” 

“ Perhaps it blew out the window.” 

“ There wasn’t the suspicion of a breeze.” 

“ Then,” said Manners decisively, “ some one 
went into that room and picked up that paper and 
destroyed it or hid it. There was no one there but 
us two.” 

“ Didn’t you take it? ” 

“ Didn’t you? ” 

“ Mr. Edward Manners to the stand,” they heard 
Doctor Dooner’s voice call out. 

“ Look here,” whispered Tilt hurriedly, “ if we 
tell about that paper and can’t produce it, it’ll look 
mighty queer.” 

Manners nodded understanding^ and moved for- 
ward to testify. Simply and directly he told the 
story that he already had told many times that 
morning. He and Tilt had gone into the clubhouse 
about six that morning. On their way to the lock- 
ers they had happened to glance into the directors’ 
room. Sitting at the table, stone dead, with a re- 
volver at his feet, was Walter Rhodes. The body 


POINTING FINGERS 


39 

was cold, showing that the shooting must have 
taken place some hours before. 

Tilt, following, corroborated Manners’ story in 
every detail, Tilt, too, being careful to make no men- 
tion of the fact that either of the Manners girls had 
been in the clubhouse that morning. As he was 
completing his testimony, he was amazed to see 
coming into the room Mollie Manners herself. Her 
mother was with her, looking anxious and dis- 
tressed, but Mollie, hatless and garbed in a becoming 
sport suit, with the quick recuperative power of 
youth, showed hardly a sign of her recent attack of 
hysteria and seemed as cool and composed as ever. 

“ That’s all you can tell us then,” said Doctor 
Dooner. 

Tilt nodded uncomfortably. 

“As I understand you,” said the examiner, “ you 
say that you and Mr. Manners were the first to dis- 
cover the body. How did you happen to visit this 
building at that early hour ? ” 

Tilt was mentally floundering, trying to think of 
some answer, when Mollie’s voice cut in : 

“ Doctor Dooner, I can explain that. It was I 
who first found the body.” 


4 o TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

The eyes of every one in the room turned in 
amazement in the girl’s direction, while both Tilt 
and her brother shot angry glances at her, trying to 
warn her to keep quiet. Her mother, too, laid her 
hand restrainingly on the girl’s arm, but she went 
calmly on: 

“ Doctor Rhodes was a very good friend of 
mine. I have known him as long as I can remem- 
ber. If anything I can tell will help find his mur- 
derer, I am going to tell it.” 

“ His murderer ! ” exclaimed Doctor Dooner. 
“ Don’t you know that he is supposed to have killed 
himself?” 

“ He was murdered,” said Mollie calmly. “ He 
would never have committed suicide.” 

“ Miss Manners.,” said Doctor Dooner, “ will 
you please take the stand and tell us everything you 
know about the affair. Tell us just what hap- 
pened.” 

“ I had a date,” Mollie began, “ at six o’clock to 
play tennis with Bill, that is, with Mr. Tilt. The 
evening before, so that I could get into the club- 
house to get my racquet and shoes, I had gotten the 
keys from old Hodder ” 


POINTING FINGERS 


4 * 


“ Who is Hodder? ” 

“The caretaker. I got here shortly before six 
and unlocked the door; I was going down the cor- 
ridor toward the lockers when I saw Doctor Rhodes. 
I didn’t realize at first what had happened. It was 
hardly light enough in the room to see distinctly, and 
my first thought was that he had fallen asleep there 
and had slept all night in a chair. I called to him, 
and he didn’t answer me. Then I thought that per- 
haps he was ill, but still suspecting nothing serious, 
I ran over to him and touched him on the cheek.” 

She stopped abruptly, and a curious shiver shook 
her at the recollection of the shock she had received. 

“ What happened then ? ” 

“ I’d never seen a dead person before,” she said, 
her voice sinking almost to a whisper. “ When I 
touched his cheek and found it cold, it was terrible. 
I got frightened, terribly frightened, and I guess I 
must have shrieked and run home.” 

“ Did you see any one in the clubhouse ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Nor hear any one? ” 

“No. I don’t remember anything that happened 
after I touched him. I must have become hyster- 


42 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

ical, I guess. But I am certain that before that I 
neither saw nor heard any one in the clubhouse. ,, 

“ That will do,” said the examiner, as he excused 
her, turning sternly toward Manners and Tilt. 
“ Young gentlemen, you will please remember that 
justice is not to be trifled with. While your mo- 
tive in suppressing the fact that Miss Manners 
found the body is perhaps understandable, such 
actions cannot be tolerated. Is Mr. Hodder here ? ” 

The chief of police found the old boatman still 
standing on the porch outside and brought him in. 

“ What is your name ? ” the examiner asked. 

“ Hodder ” he hesitated as if making an 

effort to recall the name by which he had been 
christened, adding after a second — “ Malachi 
Hodder.” 

“ Where do you live ? ” 

“ Over yonder.” 

He pointed out the window to his home, a tumble- 
down shack just off the anchorage. 

“ Miss Manners says that she got a key to the 
clubhouse from you last night. Is that statement 
true ? ” 

He nodded. 


POINTING FINGERS 


43 


“ You let her have the key? ” 

“ Sure I did.” 

“ Did any one else have keys? ” 

“ Two of 'em — him ” — he pointed toward 
Pressly Hart, “ and the Commander." 

“ The Commander," said Doctor Dooner, puzzled. 
“ Whom do you mean by ‘ the Commander ' ? " 

“ Doctor Rhodes." 

“ Why do you call him ‘ the Commander ' ? " 

“ Him and me was in the navy together ; that's 
why, sir. He was Commander Rhodes then." 

That this statement was news to most of the 
summer colonists was evident from the glances of 
surprise that were exchanged. Well as most of 
them knew, or thought they knew Doctor Rhodes, 
few of them were aware that he had been in the 
navy, and old Hodder had been a club fixture so 
long that the circumstance of his coming there had 
been forgotten. 

“ Did any one else have keys? ” 

“ Just them two.” 

“ Your cottage is within hearing distance of the 
club. Did you hear anything unusual going on last 
night — say after midnight? ” 


44 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

Hodder was silent for a moment, as if making 
an effort to think. Into his eyes came that far 
away look that was in them as he had stood on the 
porch. What was going on in his mind? Was his 
memory turning back to the days of long ago when 
“ the Commander ” and he were shipmates ? 

“ Did you hear anything ? ” Dooner repeated. 

“ Only them two shots.” 

“Two!” cried Tilt excitedly. “Were there 
two?” 

Hodder nodded emphatically, and Doctor Doon- 
er’s face showed satisfaction, as he turned to the 
jurors to say: 

“ Gentlemen, this testimony bears out the facts 
that I gleaned from an examination of the body. 
Rhodes was not killed by a shot from the revolver 
that was found lying at his feet. Although one 
bullet had been fired from it, death came to him 
from a rifle bullet that passed clear through his 
body. We found the bullet buried in the wall be- 
hind where he was sitting, it having passed clear 
through the chair. From the direction of the 
wound, the bullet apparently was fired by some one 
standing on the porch outside who aimed at him 


POINTING FINGERS 


45 


through the open window. Nor from the position 
of the body is it likely that Rhodes fired off the re- 
volver. It looks as if the murderer, after killing 
him, placed the revolver at his feet, to give a sem- 
blance of suicide. Go on, Mr. Hodder; what did 
you do after you heard the shots ? ” 

“ I didn’t do nothing, sir.” 

“ Why not? ” 

“ I wasn’t sure it was shots. I thought maybe it 
was automobiles or a boat backfiring.” 

“ And that’s all you know ? ” 

Any one observing old Hodder closely might have 
seen a crafty look come into his eyes, but nobody 
was noticing him as he mumbled: 

“ That’s all, sir.” 

“ Mr. Hart,” said Dooner, excusing Hodder and 
calling another witness, “ how do you account for 
the window being open ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Hart confusedly. “ We’re 
pretty careless about windows out here. It might 
have been left standing open for a couple of days 
without any one noticing it. Since we discharged 
the steward a couple of weeks ago, the club has sort 
of run itself.” 


46 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Why was the steward discharged ? ” 

“ Rhodes caught him grafting in buying supplies. 
Rhodes was our treasurer.” 

“ Who was this steward ? ” 

“ Gus Pincus, his name was. I don’t know much 
about him.” 

“ Has he been seen about here recently ? ” 

“ He was in my store only yesterday,” volunteered 
Police Chief Smithers; “ cussing about Doc Rhodes, 
he was, too.” 

“ Did he make any threats ? ” 

“ I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. He was 
just kicking about Rhodes not wanting to give him 
a chance to make a living.” 

“ Do you know where he is now ? ” 

“ He said he had a job at the Meadowmount 
Club.” 

The members of the club grouped about the room 
looked at each other blankly. Gus for three years 
had been their steward, Gus, a good-natured, 
weak sort of chap. It was easy enough to believe 
of him that he had done some petty pilfering, 
but Gus a murderer! They could not imagine 
it. 


POINTING FINGERS 


47 

“ While of course,” said Dooner judicially, 
“ there is no evidence to involve this man, it might 
be well to locate him and investigate his whereabouts 
last night after midnight. Are there any other wit- 
nesses?” 

“ Here's Mrs. Grady, the doctor's housekeeper,” 
said Smithers. 

It was with difficulty that any sort of a state- 
ment could be dragged out of the old woman, so 
upset was she over the tragedy. Finally Dooner 
and Smithers between them managed to get her 
calmed down sufficiently to tell about the doctor hav- 
ing been called from his home by telephone some- 
time after midnight. 

“ Who answered the 'phone ? ” 

“ Meself, bad luck the day.” 

“ Who was it ? ” 

“ 'Twas a queer, husky voice.” 

“ What did he say?” 

“ I disremember ; something about wanting to 
speak to Doctor Rhodes.” 

“ Did he give any name ? ” 

“ He did not, bad cess to him.” 

“ What did you do?” 


48 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ I called the doctor. He was in his study, read- 
ing, belike. ,, 

“ Did you recognize the voice? Was it any one 
you know ? ” 

“ It had a quare, lusty sound, though I couldn’t 
be saying whose voice it was.” 

“Was it Gus Pincus’s?” 

“ Him — the dirty thief — it was not.” 

“ But you don’t know whose it was? ” 

“ Woe’s me, I do not. If I heard it again, I’d 
know it, but wirra, wirra, what’s to become of me 
with him lying there kilt? Oh, wirra, wirra, God 
save his soul, a fine gentleman he was.” 

Weeping, the old woman was led from the stand. 
Doctor Dooner asked if there were any other wit- 
nesses. For a moment there was silence. Tilt, 
slouched down in his seat, with a puzzled expression 
on his face, was trying to measure the value of the 
evidence that old Hodder had given and to fit it to 
the facts brought out by the medical examination. 
If Rhodes had been killed with a rifle fired from the 
end of the porch, it looked to Tilt as if his murder 
was the outcome of a deliberate plot, as if the as- 
sassin, undoubtedly the man who had telephoned 


POINTING FINGERS 


49 


him, had lured him to the club for the express pur- 
pose of killing him. But what could have been the 
motive, a motive impelling enough to bring about 
this cold-blooded murder ? 

Suddenly out of the stillness that had fallen on 
the assemblage a shrill voice rang out. It was the 
Terrible Kit's. 

“ Bill, aren’t you going to tell them about the 
paper — the message Doctor Rhodes was writ- 
ing?” 

If a bomb had exploded in the clubhouse, it could 
hardly have made a greater sensation than Kit’s 
question. Doctor Dooner, deciding at once that 
both Manners and Tilt were deliberately withholding 
important evidence, after one wrathful glance in 
their direction, demanded: 

“ Who is this young lady? What does she know 
about this case ? ” 

“ She is my sister,” said Manners, looking at Kit 
as if he would like to have spanked her then and 
there ; but returning his glance with a scornful look, 
Kit took the witness stand and glibly told of the 
finding of the message written on a prescription 
blank. 


50 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ And what became of that piece of paper ? ” 
asked Doctor Dooner accusingly. 

“ The last I saw of it, my brother put it back on 
the table; then he sent me home, and I didn’t see 
any more.” 

“ Mr. Manners,” said Dooner severely, “ will you 
please explain why you said nothing about this all- 
important clue ? ” 

“ Because,” faltered Manners, “ when Tilt and I 
came back there, after ’phoning Hart, the scrap of 
paper had vanished.” 

“ How do you account for its vanishing? ” 

“ I don’t.” 

“ Why did you not tell about this paper when you 
were first examined ? ” 

Ed Manners shot an appealing glance in Tilt’s 
direction as if he expected his friend to help him 
out, but Bill, his tall ungainly figure slouched down 
in his seat, refused to meet his eye. 

“ I don’t know,” said Manners lamely. “ I felt 
that it would sound fishy to tell about this paper 
when we were unable to produce it.” 

“ Could your sister — your sister Kit — have 
taken it ? ” 


POINTING FINGERS 


5i 

“ Oh, no,” he said quickly. “ That would have 
been impossible. She wasn't in the room at all — 
just at the door. She was not out of my sight until 
I sent her home.” 

“ Could Mr. Tilt have secreted it? ” 

“ I do not see how or when he could have.” 

Much puzzled, Dooner recalled Tilt to the stand, 
and he of course told the same amazing story. 
When they went together to the telephone it was 
there. When they returned, two minutes later, it 
was gone. He could offer no theory to account for 
its disappearance. It was evident, from the faces 
of the spectators, from Doctor Dooner’s expression, 
that every one present was convinced that both 
young men were lying. Even Manners and Tilt 
realized that their statements had resulted only in 
creating suspicion that they both knew or suspected 
more about the murder than they were telling, and 
both shared righteous indignation toward Kit, whose 
indiscreet question had precipitated the crisis. 

“Mr. Tilt,” said Dooner — and his voice was 
very stern — “ I trust you realize that you have been 
guilty of a grave indiscretion in suppressing this 
evidence. Remembering that you are under oath, 


5 2 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

answer me this question: Have you any opinion or 
suspicion, or knowledge as to whom this message 
Doctor Rhodes was writing was addressed ? ” 

“ No, sir. Absolutely none/’ 

“ Miss Manners — Miss Mollie Manners — who 
first found the body, has testified that Rhodes was a 
friend, a very good friend of hers. Did the thought 
not come into your mind when you found that paper 
that the message might have been addressed to her 
— to Miss Mollie Manners ? ” 

“ Oh, my God, no,” Tilt shouted. “ Such a 
thought never entered my head. That was utterly 
impossible.” 

“Tell me the truth,” persisted Dooner relent- 
lessly. “ Wasn’t that the real reason you and her 
brother entered into a conspiracy to suppress this 
evidence ? ” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ What was your motive then ? ” 

“We hadn’t any,” cried Tilt. “ The paper had 
disappeared. We could not account for it. We de- 
cided to say nothing about it for the present. That’s 
all there was to it.” 

“ Humph,” snapped Dooner disbelievingly. 


POINTING FINGERS 


53 

“ That's all. I'll ask Mr. Manners to take the stand 
again." 

Both Tilt and Manners now realized the gravity 
of their situation and the terrible mess they had 
made of it. The insinuation that it was Mollie — 
their Mollie — who had had a rendezvous with 
Rhodes was absurd, incredible, yet they both felt 
that once the suspicion was whispered, there was no 
telling where it might end or what its effect might be 
on the girl's reputation. If only they had told about 
the miserable paper in the first place. Ed Man- 
ners' face as he took the stand was black as a 
thundercloud. 

“ Mr. Manners,” said Dooner, “ I will put the 
same question to you that I asked Mr. Tilt. Have 
you any suspicion, opinion or knowledge as to whom 
the message was addressed?” 

“ None whatever.” 

“ Did you think it was meant for your sister ? ” 

“ Certainly not,” Manners answered, restraining 
himself with effort. 

“ Why did you not mention finding that message ? 
Tell me the truth.” 

For a moment Manners was silent, moving un- 


54 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

easily in the chair, then turning to give a defiant 
glance at Tilt, he said slowly: 

“ I thought that Mr. Tilt for some reason of his 
own had hidden or destroyed that paper.” 


CHAPTER IV 

THE FIRST SECRET 

There were just two passengers for the Inn on 
the two-sixteen train that afternoon, — Paul Carew 
and a slender, boyish-looking stranger with intense 
eyes. On the way up from the station the taxi- 
driver, with garrulous delight, told them of the 
strange affair at the club. 

“ Of course,” he said, “ after what was brung 
out at the inquest, there ain't a doubt in any one's 
mind but that the girl is mixed up in it.” 

Carew's face went white. With a look of in- 
credulous horror in his eyes, he asked: 

“ What girl do you mean ? ” 

“ The Manners girl — Mollie Manners,” the man 
blundered on. 

“ My God ! ” cried Carew. “ That's impossible. 
It isn't true.” 

The stranger beside him turned a searching glance 
at him, as if puzzled to account for his vehemence. 


56 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Of course/’ said the taxi-driver hesitantly, 
feeling perhaps from the manner in which Carew 
received his statement that he had gone a little too 
far, “ of course, I ain’t saying that she done it her- 
self. I’m only repeating what everybody else is say- 
ing about her. And as for that, there’s always a 
woman at the bottom of everything.” 

“ But it couldn’t have been Miss Manners,” 
Carew protested, his face still white and set. “ I 
know it couldn’t.” 

Taking it that his veracity had been attacked, the 
taxi-driver indignantly sought to bolster up his 
position. 

“ What for then,” he demanded, “ did her brother 
and Tilt try so hard to keep her name out of it? 
Why did they keep so quiet at first about the mes- 
sage the doctor was writing when he was shot ? x\nd 
who was he writing it to? She admitted on the 
stand he was a very good friend of hers. What 
was she doing at the club all by herself at that hour 
of the morning? I tell you there’s something fishy 
about the stories her and her brother told. They’re 
keeping something back. Maybe Miss Manners is 
mixed up in it and maybe she ain’t. I’m not say- 


THE FIRST SECRET 


57 

ing. All I’m saying is that the girl knows more 
than she’s telling.” 

“ She had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t 
have,” insisted Carew warmly. 

As the taxi drew up at the Inn, he sprang out 
hurriedly, and without waiting to wash or change, 
ran to the garage for his roadster and started at 
once for his fiancee’s home. His companion, stand- 
ing for a moment on the porch of the Inn, watched 
his actions with unconcealed interest, and when he 
turned to go to the desk, his brows were drawn in a 
pucker as if he was trying to puzzle out why Carew 
had been so certain about Miss Manners. His man- 
ner was abstracted as he wrote his name on the 
register: 

“ Richard Devan, New York City.” 

“ Staying for some time, Mr. Devan? ” the clerk 
asked, as he reached for a key. 

“ Yes,” he said, “for several days, probably — 
perhaps for several weeks.” 

Meanwhile Carew’s arrival at the Manners home 
had been anticipated a few minutes by Bill Tilt. 
When the inquest had been adjourned with the 
customary verdict, “ by a person or persons un- 


58 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

known,” Tilt, like the rest of the colony, had gone 
home for luncheon, but now, seated on the Manners 
porch with the family, he was having it out with Ed 
for having practically accused him of secreting 
Rhodes’s unfinished message. 

“ I didn’t intend to let you in for it,” Ed was try- 
ing to explain. “ The disappearance of the pesky 
thing got me all balled up. I knew Kit couldn’t 
have taken it, for I’d had my eye on her all the time. 
I knew I hadn’t taken it myself. There wasn’t any 
one else there. It must have been you.” 

“ But,” cried the aggrieved Tilt, “ what on earth 
would I do it for? ” 

“ I admit that puzzled me,” said Ed, “ but if you 
didn’t take it, who did ? ” 

“ Maybe,” interjected the Terrible Kit, who, be- 
ing a movie fan, was up on mysterious crimes, 
“ maybe there was some one else in the clubhouse, 
some one we didn’t see. Perhaps the murderer still 
was lurking near the scene of his dastardly crime.” 

She delivered the last phrase as though she was 
fairly gloating over the affair, and her mother gave 
her a reproving glance as Tilt said thoughtfully; 

“ I wonder if Kit is right. Somebody might have 


' THE FIRST SECRET 


59 

been hiding in there. After we found the body, we 
didn’t look about for anything else.” 

“ There are a lot of nooks and alcoves,” Ed ad- 
mitted, “ where some one could have hidden.” 

Just at this junction Carew drove up. His face 
was black with rage as he ran up the steps. 

“ How dared you bring Mollie into this ? ” he 
fairly shrieked at her brother. 

“ It could not be helped,” Ed started to explain, 
but the wrathful young man would not listen, and 
turning to Tilt, began hauling him, too, over the 
coals, for his part in the affair. 

“ And you, Tilt,” he raved. “ You have always 
professed to be a friend of hers.” 

“ It was that fool Doctor Dooner that did it,” the 
Terrible Kit burst out valiantly. “ Both the boys 
did the best they could to keep both Mollie and me 
out of it.” 

“ Really, Paul,” said Mollie calmly, “ there’s 
nothing to get excited about. Everybody who 
knows us knows that none of us could have had 
anything to do with it.” 

“ Is that so?” exclaimed her lover sarcastically. 
“ You ought to have heard the taxi-driver. He told 


6o TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


me everybody was saying that the Manners girl was 
mixed up in it some way.” 

“ Just silly village gossip. They love to talk 
about us in the village.” 

“ But,” groaned Carew, “ think of the notoriety 
of it. Your name will be in all the papers, and the 
reporters’ll hound you to death, prying into every- 
thing you ever have done.” 

“ Nonsense!” cried Mollie spiritedly. “ What 
difference does a little unpleasant notoriety make, if 
only we can discover who killed Doctor Rhodes? 
After all, that’s all that matters. He was my 
friend, our friend. Nothing that can happen to me 
means anything if it will help to discover the brutal 
coward who shot him down.” 

“ You should think about me,” cried Carew pas- 
sionately. “ Do you think I like it, having my 
fiancee’s name in all the papers in connection with 
a murder? ” 

“I’m sorry you feel that way about it, Paul,” 
said Mollie, still unmoved. 

“ Promise me that you’ll have nothing more to do 
with it — that you’ll keep out of the limelight.” 

“ I can’t promise that,” she said gravely. “ I am 


THE FIRST SECRET 61 

determined to do all I can to help find Walter 
Rhodes's murderer." 

“ I forbid your having anything more to do with 
it," cried Carew. 

Mollie’s chin went forward with an aggressive 
thrust, and her eyes flashed with rising anger, but 
before she could make any retort, Pressly Hart 
pulled up in his car in front of the house and came 
up on the porch. In the car with him was John 
Dixon, a lawyer living in the colony. 

“ Oh, hello, Tilt," he exclaimed, “ it is you I’m 
looking for. I thought I’d find you here. I am 
going over to Doctor Rhodes’s cottage with Dixon 
to look through his papers to see if we can find any 
clue to the mystery. For some reason Dixon wants 
you along." 

“ Certainly I’ll come," said Tilt, rising, glad of an 
excuse to absent himself. 

“ It may interest you to know,” Hart explained 
to him, as they drove away, “that I talked with 
Doctor Dooner after the inquest. He agreed with 
me that Rhodes’s murder was most mysterious. I 
decided that in the interests of the club we ought to 
help clear the thing up and telephoned to the city for 


62 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


an experienced detective I knew about. He came 
out on the two-sixteen and is to meet us at the 
cottage.” 

As Tilt listened, he was wondering curiously why 
Dixon had insisted on his coming, but Hart chat- 
tered on, giving him no chance to ask questions, and 
just as they reached the Rhodes cottage the detective 
drove up in the Inn taxi. It was the boyish-looking 
young man who had come up from the station with 
Carew. 

He and Tilt gave each other casual glances 
and then with a howl of joy fell on each other’s 
neck. 

“ Bill Tilt ! ” exclaimed Devan. 

“ Good old Dick,” roared Tilt delightedly. 

“ What,” cried Hart, “ do you two chaps know 
each other? ” 

“ Do we know each other,” cried Tilt. “ We 
were buddies in France. I’ll tell you, Hart, you’ve 
picked some detective. Devan was one of Uncle 
Sam’s very finest intelligence officers.” 

Their surprised greetings over, they approached 
the cottage, where they found Mrs. Grady holding 
mournful court on the porch. All the servants in 


THE FIRST SECRET 


63 

the colony — Swedish, Irish, colored and Japanese 
— seemed to be gathered there, and to each new 
arrival she was tearfully relating the episode of the 
midnight telephone message. 

“ Send these people away,” Hart commanded, and 
as they departed, he explained to the old house- 
keeper the mission on which they had come. She 
was alone in the house, for Rhodes’s body had been 
conveyed to the undertaker’s shop in the village. 
She made no objection but led them at once to the 
doctor’s study, pointing to a large old-fashioned 
safe that stood in one corner. 

“ You’ll find them all there,” she said. “ That’s 
where he was after keeping everything.” 

“ That will be all, Mrs. Grady,” said the lawyer 
suggestively, as she took her place in the doorway, 
arms akimbo, evidently intent on seeing what went 
on, but at his hint she grumblingly withdrew, leav- 
ing them alone . 

“ Gentlemen,” said Mr. Dixon, “ before we ex- 
amine the contents of the safe, I would like to relate 
a curious incident. Several times in the last few 
years I have happened to look after some small legal 
matters for Doctor Rhodes. Though I know noth- 


64 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

in g in general about his affairs. One day, a couple 
of weeks ago, he dropped into my office. 

“ ‘ Dixon/ he said, 4 I’ve been making a will. I 
wish you’d look over it and tell me if you think it 
will stand, and get me some witnesses while I sign 
it.’ I read through the document, and he signed it, 
taking it away with him. As he was leaving the 
office, he turned and came back. 

“ ‘ Dixon/ he said, ‘ if anything ever happens to 
me, here is the combination to the safe in my cottage 
up at the beach/ 

“ ‘ What do you wish me to do with it ? 9 I asked. 

“ ‘ Keep it. Living alone as I do, it is just as well 
for some one to know where to find things/ ” 

“ Do you suppose,” asked Tilt, in awed tones, 
“ that he had any premonition, any warning of the 
dreadful thing that was soon to happen to him? 
Did he speak of any threats against his life? ” 

The lawyer shook his head. 

“ He was as calm and collected as if he were dis- 
cussing the weather. There was nothing in his 
manner to indicate any mental perturbation. The 
incident made little impression on me at the time, 
even though I could not help marveling at the con- 


THE FIRST SECRET 


6 5 

tents of his will. I put the slip with the safe com- 
bination on it in an envelope and locked it up and 
never gave it another thought until this morning; 
when I heard of the murder, I went right into town 
then and got it.” 

“When did you say he gave it to you?” asked 
Hart thoughtfully. 

“ I’ve forgotten the exact date. It was about two 
weeks ago.” 

“ That must have been just at the time he dis- 
charged the steward,” cried Hart excitedly. “ You 
don’t suppose that Gus Pincus had threatened his 
life, do you? ” 

“ Nonsense,” cried Tilt. “ Gus Pincus is a 
light-fingered rascal, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. 
It’s absurd to think of Rhodes being afraid of 
him.” 

“Anyhow,” suggested Devan, “ let’s see what is in 
the safe.” 

Dixon, combination in hand, quickly opened it, 
revealing books and papers within in apple-pie order, 
for Rhodes, like most successful surgeons, had been 
methodical in everything he did. There were sev- 
eral ledgers in which he had kept accounts of his 


66 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


professional work and of the returns from his in- 
vestments, and in an envelope with them a packet of 
income tax receipts. As they glanced over these, an 
exclamation of astonishment escaped his three neigh- 
bors. Though they all had looked on him as fairly 
well to do, none had suspected Rhodes of being any- 
thing like a millionaire, yet the receipts showed that 
he had been paying taxes on an income exceeding 
seventy thousand. 

Practically all his estate, it quickly appeared, was 
in bonds and stocks, for no deeds were found except 
for the cottage in which he lived, though his securi- 
ties filled one of the drawers in the safe. They did 
not stop to list these but hastened to open a small 
drawer to which they found a key inside the safe. 
Within it, with a packet of Liberty Bonds, they 
found a sealed gray envelope with something written 
on the outside. Dixon carried it to the window, 
where the light was better, and together they ex- 
amined the superscription, which read : 

“ The last will and testament of Walter Rhodes, 
M. D., of Rockmont.” 

“ We'd better not open it,” said Dixon. 

“ Why not? ” said Hart. “ You're his attorney. 


THE FIRST SECRET 67 

That’s undoubtedly just the reason he gave you the 
combination to his safe.” 

Dixon looked toward the detective, who nodded 
approval, whereupon he broke the seal and drew 
forth a document in the doctor’s own handwriting, 
which read: 


June 10 , 1921. 

I, Walter Rhodes, M. D., being of sound and dis- 
posing mind and memory, and considering the un- 
certainty of life, do make, publish and declare this 
to be my last will and testament as follows, hereby 
revoking all other and former wills by me, at any 
time made : 

First: I direct that all lawful and just claims 
against my estate shall be paid. 

Second: I direct that my executor shall pay an 
annuity of six hundred dollars ($600) in monthly 
payments to my housekeeper, Bridget Grady, for the 
term of her natural life, as a recognition of her 
faithful services to me. 

Third: I direct that my executor shall pay to 
Rose Addison, nurse, who has been in my employ 
for many years, the sum of Ten Thousand dollars 
($10,000) in cash. 

Fourth: The residue of my estate, both real and 
personal, I give, devise and bequeath to Mary Eve- 
lyn Manners, of Rockmont. 

Fifth: I hereby appoint as my sole executor, 
without bond, and with power to sell, my friend 
William H. Tilt, and I hereby urge and warn said 


68 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


executor, by all lawful expedients, to oppose and re- 
sist any claim or claims against my estate, full legal 
settlement of my wife’s interest therein having been 
made, as by law provided. 

As Dixon raised his eyes from the document he 
had been reading, his glance met the startled eyes 
of his auditors. In that last paragraph, in that 
carefully worded warning to his executor, they read 
a revelation. They sensed that in Walter Rhodes’s 
life there had been a secret — some hidden, ugly 
thing — that he dared not face, something so re- 
pellent, perhaps so scandalous that he had referred 
to it only in the most obscure way. But Tilt, while 
he grasped the sinister significance of that last clause 
as quickly as the others, was even more startled and 
perturbed by what had gone before. 

“ I wonder what it means ? ” he muttered to him- 
self. “ He’s left everything to Mollie, and he made 
the will the day after she got engaged.” 

“ But,” said Dixon, “ plainly he was expecting his 
will to be contested. That last clause refers to a 
wife who he must have had reason to believe might 
fight for a share in the money. That paragraph 
puzzled me when he had me read the will, but as he 


THE FIRST SECRET 69 

volunteered no explanation, I asked for none. If 
you will recall, there was always a reserve about him 
that made one hesitate to ask him questions. As a 
lawyer, I had no reason for trying to question him. 
The will clearly and plainly stated what his wishes 
were, and that is all any will can do.” 

“ That last paragraph must refer to some episode 
that happened years ago,” said Pressly Hart. “ Who 
would have thought that Walter Rhodes had a past.” 

“All men have pasts,” said Richard Devan sagely. 
“ So Rhodes was married.” 

“ Married ? ” cried Hart. “And we all thought 
him the most confirmed old bachelor you ever saw. 
Women didn't seem to interest him.” 

“ Why, then,” asked Devan, “ did he leave his 
fortune to one, to Miss Manners ? ” 

Meanwhile Tilt's mind had been in a turmoil. 
The news of what the will contained was astound- 
ing, almost incredible. Mollie an heiress, Mollie a 
millionaire ! All Rhodes's money left to her. What 
would people think about it? What would they 
say? Already her name was being bandied about. 
The unfortunate inquest had started the tongues of 
gossip wagging about her and Rhodes. 


70 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Look here/’ he cried, “ can’t we keep the con- 
tents of this will secret for the present ? It will only 
make talk if it is filed. Is there not some way that 
it can be withheld until the mystery of the murder 
is solved ? ” 

“ That matter rests in your hands,” said Dixon. 
“ The law allows a reasonable length of time for 
the filing of a will.” 

Devan’s keen eyes had been studying Tilt’s face 
as he made the proposition, as if trying to discover 
the executor’s real motive in making it. 

“ Tilt is right,” he said abruptly. “ It can do no 
harm to keep the contents of the will secret for a few 
days. Its publication, in fact, might only result in 
starting a lot of gossip that would obscure the trail 
of the murderer. What do you say, gentlemen? 
Shall we pledge ourselves to secrecy until Tilt gives 
the word?” 

“ What about Mollie — Miss Manners ? ” asked 
Tilt. “ Hasn’t she at least a right to know about 
it?” 

“ I think,” said Devan, after a moment’s con- 
sideration, “you may safely tell her about it, if you 
will pledge her also to secrecy.” 


THE FIRST SECRET 


7 * 

“ Then,” said Hart, half disappointedly, it seemed 
to Tilt, “ you don’t think that she is mixed up in it 
in any way — in the murder, I mean ? ” 

“ Some woman is mixed up in nearly every mur- 
der,” said Devan, “ but although I have hardly be- 
gun my investigation yet, I’m convinced that in the 
case of Doctor Rhodes’s murder, the woman in- 
volved is not Miss Manners.” 

“ Who is it then ? ” asked Hart eagerly. 

“ I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea yet. 
I can only say that when we find the woman in- 
volved, we’ll find the murderer.” 

“You think a woman did it!” cried Tilt amaz- 
edly. 

“ I didn’t say so. I merely meant that whether 
a man or a woman did the killing, there is a woman 
involved in it somewhere.” 

Giving the pledge of secrecy that Tilt had sug- 
gested, they restored the papers to the safe and 
separated, Tilt insisting on his old friend making his 
headquarters at the Tilt cottage. 

“ It will enable you to carry on your investigations 
without any one suspecting you,” Tilt explained. 
“ My people are in the mountains, and we’ll be alone 


72 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

there. I’ll give it out that you are an old army mate 
of mine here on a visit, and you can work un- 
molested.” 

“ That’s a bully idea,” said Devan, “ if Mr. Hart 
and Mr. Dixon will help us preserve my incognito.” 

The reasonableness of this appealed to both of 
them, and they readily assented. Tilt drove back to 
the Inn with Devan to get his luggage, but as they 
rode along together, there came into his mind four 
puzzling questions, — questions that he did not sub- 
mit even to his friend, Richard Devan ; questions to 
which, ponder over them though he did for many 
days to come, he could find no satisfactory answer. 

Why had Walter Rhodes left all his money to 
Mollie Manners the day after her engagement was 
announced ? 

Why had Rhodes named him as executor — him, 
Bill Tilt — when Mollie was to marry Paul Carew? 

Who was Walter Rhodes’s wife? 

Where was she? 


CHAPTER V 
A NEW MYSTERY 

“It's your theory, then,” said Tilt, as he and 
Richard Devan sat that evening after dinner on the 
porch of the Tilt cottage, “ that a woman did it? ” 

“ I try not to have theories,” said Devan. 

He had had a busy afternoon after their discovery 
of Walter Rhodes's will. He had visited the club- 
house and made a minute study of the scene of the 
crime. He had driven over to see Doctor Dooner 
and from him had obtained an account of what the 
inquest had brought forth ; and besides, he had spent 
a long time at the telephone, for what purpose Tilt 
had no idea. 

“ It is not a theory, but an accepted fact with in- 
vestigators,” he continued, “ that in ninety per cent, 
of the cases of premeditated murder, a woman is 
involved in some way. Old Nature has seen to 
that. The sex relation is the most impelling motive 
there is. Where a man kills another in a quarrel, 


74 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

it may be over property, a fancied insult, without 
premeditation, a woman may or may not be at the 
bottom of it; but where a murder is carefully 
planned, facts show that we can safely assume that 
there is a woman concerned. But theories otherwise 
only hamper an investigator. The modern method 
is to collect the facts and then more facts, and when 
you have gathered all the facts possible, to try to 
fit them together.” 

“ I suppose your army work taught you that.” 

“ It surely did. In our intelligence work, we al- 
ways went about everything that way, noting and 
making record of even the most trivial things. It 
was surprising often, when the facts that had been 
collected by a dozen different investigators were as- 
sembled, how enlightening they were. At first most 
of them would seem utterly insignificant, meaning- 
less, with no relation to each other. As you studied 
them carefully, you suddenly would discover that 
two of them matched. You put the two together 
and began grouping the other facts you had gathered 
about the two that matched. Before you knew it, 
you had formed a picture, and the information you 
sought was before you. In a murder case, I have 


A NEW MYSTERY 


75 


found the same method advisable. I collect facts, 
facts, facts, and when I have assembled them, in 
most cases I find I have the murderer’s picture.” 

“ What facts have you about this case ? ” 

“ Not as many as I hope to have in a few minutes 
when Miss Addison gets here.” 

“ Miss Addison,” exclaimed Tilt. The name had 
a familiar sound, but he could not identify it. 

“ The doctor’s office attendant.” 

“ Where did you find her? How did you man- 
age to locate her ? ” 

“ That was easy. I called up several of the 
nurses’ registries and finally got her boarding place. 
She had not yet heard of Doctor Rhodes’s death and 
naturally wanted to get all the details, so I took the 
liberty of asking her to come out this evening.” 

“ What do you think she knows about it ? ” 

“A woman in a man’s office, working with him 
day by day, gets to know a lot about him, often 
knows him better than any one else in the world. 
I do not know whether Miss Addison has any in- 
formation, but we will soon find out.” 

“ What other facts have you gathered ? ” 

“ Let’s jot them down,” said Devan, “and see 


76 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

whether anything she may tell us will fit into what 
we already have. ,, 

Seizing a pad he jotted down: 

Walter Rhodes two weeks ago makes a will. 

From this will it is evident that he anticipates 
a claimant to his fortune to appear. 

He shows the will to a lawyer and gives him 
the combination of his safe. 

Question — What put the thought of making a 
will into his head? Had threats been made 
against him? Were these threats made in per- 
son or by mail? Who would be apt to know 
about these threats ? 

“ Fd say the nurse would be likely to know if 
any one did,” interrupted Tilt. 

“ It'll do no harm to ask her,” admitted Devan, 
as he resumed his summary: 

Last night a man calls Rhodes to the tele- 
phone. 

He goes to the club, presumably to keep an 
appointment with this man. 

He waits for some time and starts to write 
a note. 

While writing, he is shot down through the 
open window. 

The use of a rifle indicates that his murderer 
is a man. 


A NEW MYSTERY 


77 


The murderer, having killed him, approaches, 
takes out Rhodes’s revolver, and fires it off to 
give the semblance of suicide. 

The murderer was some one Rhodes knew — 
some one who knew Rhodes’s habits — who 
knew that he had a key to the club. 

Question — Was the murderer one of 
Rhodes’s fellow club members? 

“ My God,” cried Tilt, “ you don’t think it was 
one of us, do you? ” 

“ Don’t the facts seem to indicate that it was 
some one who knew a good deal about Rhodes ? ” 

“ They certainly do,” admitted Tilt. “ You don’t 
think it could be Gus Pincus, the steward Rhodes 
discharged ? ” 

“ The local police think he did it,” said Devan. 
“ They are planning to arrest him to-night. I had 
a chat with him this afternoon. He got hold of a 
bottle of whisky yesterday and doesn’t remember 
much about what he did last night. He knows that 
he is suspected and is badly frightened.” 

“Of course he knew a lot about Rhodes,” said 
Tilt, “ and he was all worked up over his discharge, 
but I can’t believe he would do it.” 

“ Nor I,” said Devan, “ but if he is innocent, his 


78 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

arrest will only serve to make the real murderer feel 
safer.” 

“ The thing that puzzles me most,” said Tilt, “ is 
the disappearance of that note the doctor was writ- 
ing. Who do you suppose could have taken it ? ” 

“ The murderer probably has it,” answered Devan 
calmly. 

“ But there was no one in the clubhouse but Ed 
Manners and I. You don’t think it was one of us ? ” 

Devan laughed at his friend’s consternation. 

“ You two didn’t see any one else there, but 
there must have been some one else. Picture the 
committing of the crime. The murderer has four 
things in mind, — to kill Rhodes, to make it look like 
suicide, to get away safely, and to conceal his rifle. 
He is so intent on these four things that he forgets 
about the note Rhodes is writing. Rhodes’s body, 
as it falls forward on the table, conceals the note. 
The murderer carries out his plans and reaches home 
without having been discovered. Naturally, though, 
he is unable to sleep. As he lies in bed, he reenacts 
the tragedy, trying to make certain that he has left 
no clues behind. Suddenly he recalls what Rhodes 
was doing as he fired at him. The thought appals 


A NEW MYSTERY 


79 

him. Rhodes was writing — what? To whom? 
His name may be on that scrap of paper. It may 
betray him. He must get possession of it before 
any one else finds it. He rises hastily and hurries 
to the clubhouse. He is too late. You and Man- 
ners are already there. He conceals himself in one 
of the alcoves and watches to see what you will do. 
When you are telephoning, he sees his opportunity. 
He gets possession of the paper and vanishes. He 
feels safe against discovery. ,, 

“ I hope you are right,” sighed Tilt, “ but what 
do you suppose was the murderer’s motive ? That’s 
what gets me.” 

“ Who, here in the colony, knows Rhodes best ? 
Who are his oldest friends ? ” 

“ The Manners family, I suppose,” said Tilt 
guardedly. “ They must have known him a long 
time.” 

“Any one else ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Tilt, “ there’s old Hodder, who looks 
after the boats. He calls Rhodes * the Commander.’ 
They must have been in the navy together, though I 
never knew till the inquest that Rhodes had been a 
navy man.” 


8o TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ Can you get old Hodder here to-night, right 
away?” asked Devan, his keen gray eyes showing 
acute interest. 

“ Sure ! I’ll run down to his shack now and bring 
him over.” 

Not until his return with Hodder a few minutes 
later did he understand that the errand on which he 
had been dispatched was a ruse on Devan’s part to 
be alone when Miss Addison arrived. She was on 
the porch talking earnestly to Devan, a slender 
woman of perhaps forty, who even without her uni- 
form looked just what she was, — a sensible, prac- 
tical, capable trained nurse. 

“ Would you mind asking Hodder to wait a few 
minutes on the lawn ? ” said Devan, as he presented 
Tilt. “ Miss Addison was just about to tell me 
something that may have a bearing on the case.” 

“ It was about three weeks ago,” the nurse began, 
“ when Doctor Rhodes made a request that struck 
me as peculiar. He was always most methodical, let- 
ting nothing interfere with his office hours, but one 
day he said: ‘ Miss Addison, please make no engage- 
ments for me to-morrow between two and four, and 
if any one comes send them away. I am expecting 


A NEW MYSTERY 


81 


a caller with whom I have an important matter to 
discuss. Admit no one but him.’ ‘What’s his 
name ? ’ I asked, to be sure of admitting the right 
person. ‘ He’ll call himself Mr. Smith,’ he an- 
swered.” 

“ Did you see this Mr. Smith ? ” asked Devan 
eagerly. “ Could you describe him ? ” 

Miss Addison shook her head. 

“ Doctor Rhodes must have been at the window, 
on the lookout for him. He admitted the man him- 
self, without waiting for him to ring the bell. I was 
in the back offices making up bandages and did not 
know there was any one there until I heard excited 
voices in the front office.” 

“ Excited voices ! Was there a quarrel ? ” 

“ It did not sound as if they were quarreling. 
Doctor Rhodes’s voice seemed as firm and even as 
always. It sounded rather as if he was insisting on 
his caller doing something and as if the man was 
protesting vigorously against it.” 

“ How long did the caller stay? ” 

“ It must have been over an hour. The doctor 
himself let the man out, and I did not see him.” 

“ Was that the only time this visitor was there ? ” 


82 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ No, he came twice afterward, the last time only 
day before yesterday, and as before his visits always 
were shrouded in mystery, the doctor himself ad- 
mitting him and letting him out. I never caught 
even a glimpse of him.” 

“ Would you know his voice again if you heard 
it?” 

“ I doubt it. I heard it only through folding 
doors. No, I don’t think so.” 

“ Is there anything else you can think of that 
might have a bearing on the case ? ” 

“ No, I don’t think there is,” she answered, after 
a moment’s hesitation. 

“ Do you know Miss Manners — Miss Mollie 
Manners?” asked Devan. 

“ I know that the doctor had a friend of that 
name, but I never have seen her. Several times he 
has commissioned me to buy birthday and Christmas 
gifts for her.” 

“ Do you know if Doctor Rhodes had ever been 
married ? ” 

“ Married ! ” she cried. “ Why, of course not. 
He was a typical old bachelor.” 

“ Call Hodder in,” said Devan, turning to Tilt. 


A NEW MYSTERY 83 

“ Miss Addison, I’d be glad to have you stay and 
hear what Hodder has to say, if you wish.” 

“ Certainly I’ll stay,” she said. “ I’m just as 
much interested in things as you are.” 

“ I forgot to tell you,” said Devan, “ that Rhodes 
has left you ten thousand dollars.” 

Miss Addison’s eyes filled with tears. 

“ It was just like him to do that. He was good 
and kind to every one, but I’d willingly give it all to 
have him back, or to discover the man who killed 
him.” 

“ Hodder,” said Tilt, coming upon the porch just 
then with the old boatman, “ this is Mr. Devan, who 
wishes to ask you some questions about Doctor 
Rhodes.” 

“All right, sir,” the man replied. 

“ You called Doctor Rhodes 4 the Commander/ ” 
said Devan. “ How long had you known him ? ” 

“A matter of twenty-five, maybe twenty-six years, 
and a fine man he was, too.” 

“ Why did you call him ‘ the Commander ’ ? ” 

“ That’s what he was when I first knowed him — 
Commander Rhodes, sir.” 

“ In the American navy ? ” 


84 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Sure, sir. We seen service together, him and 
me.” 

“ Had he ever been married ? ” 

The old man’s face took on a strange look, its 
hardening lines indicating a stubborn intent not to 
reveal too much. 

“ That’s not for me to be saying.” 

“ But he had been married? ” 

“ I’m not saying that.” 

“What are you so secretive about it for?” de- 
manded Tilt, explosively. “ Why don’t you tell us 
if Rhodes was married or not? You know, don’t 
you?” 

“ I’m not saying if I know or if I don’t know. 
Fifteen years ago it was my enlistment ran out, and 
I was looking for a place when who should I meet 
but the Commander, and it was him that brought 
me up here, and just one word he says to me. 
* Hodder,’ he says, ‘ what’s past is buried and ain’t 
to be talked about.’ ‘ Right, sir,’ says I, and it ain’t 
going to be talked about, even with him lying dead 
there. It was himself put it on me to be silent, if 
by chance there was anything I knew, and silent I’ll 
be, not that I’m saying there’s anything I know,” 


A NEW MYSTERY 


85 

“ But,” persisted Devan, “ if there is anything 
you know that may help us find who murdered Doc- 
tor Rhodes, don’t you see that it is your duty to tell 
us, your duty as a friend. He was a friend of yours, 
wasn’t he? ” 

“ The best friend I had in the world,” the old man 
said. 

“ Then why won’t you tell us what you know 
about him ? ” 

“ Nothing I could tell could bring him back 
again,” persisted Hodder stubbornly. 

“ But wouldn’t you like to see his murderer cap- 
tured? ” said Tilt. “ Do you think it’s right to hold 
back information that may help the man that killed 
him?” 

“ It may be right, and it mayn’t. There’s never 
but the one thing he asked of me, and many’s the 
kind thing he’s done for me. It ain’t to be talked 
about, says he, and come what may, I ain’t talking.” 

“ Perhaps,” suggested Miss Addison in an under- 
tone, “ he might talk to Mr. Tilt by himself. The 
presence of two strangers may bother him.” 

Devan nodded understanding^, and turning to 
Tilt, said: 


86 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ Well, Bill, if Mr. Hodder doesn’t wish to take 
us into his confidence, I suppose that is all there is 
to it, so as there are some things Miss Addison 
and I wish to talk over alone, we’ll excuse you 
two.” 

“ You understand, sir,” said old Hodder apolo- 
getically, as he rose to go, 44 I’d tell you what you’re 
asking if I could, but he says to me, says he, 4 Hod- 
der, there’s some things that ain’t to be talked 
about.’ ” 

44 1 understand,” said Devan, catching Bill’s eye 
in an effort to give him the suggestion that he should 
try to pump the old man as they went away together. 

Tilt caught his meaning, but as he and old Hodder 
strolled together to the old man’s shack, not a word 
more could he get out of him. Feeling vastly dis- 
appointed, he returned home, to find Miss Addison 
just entering the taxi for the station. 

44 Get anything more ? ” asked Devan, as soon as 
they were alone. 

44 Not a word. He’s as stubborn as a stone 
fence.” 

44 Never mind. We’ll find some way of making 
him talk when we are ready. Who else here in the 


A NEW MYSTERY 87 

colony knew Rhodes well — who has known him for 
a long time ? ” 

“ I suppose,” said Tilt, after pondering over the 
question, “ that Mrs. Manners must know him as 
well as any one.” 

“ The girl’s mother? ” 

“ Of course, Mollie’s mother.” 

" Do you know the family well enough to take me 
over there — to drop in quite casually ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, certainly. I’m over there a lot. It 
‘will seem perfectly natural for me to bring over an 
old pal to meet them.” 

“ Come on, then,” said Devan. 

When they reached the Manners home, they found 
its occupants following their accustomed routine, in 
spite of the day’s exciting events, Mollie and Paul 
Carew ensconced on the porch, the Terrible Kit 
away at one of the neighbors, and Ed off somewhere 
playing auction. Presenting Devan merely as an 
old army pal, Tilt lingered on the porch for only a 
moment and then remarked: 

“ Dick must meet your mother.” 

“ You know where to find her,” Mollie answered 
lazily from the hammock. 


88 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ Of course,” Tilt answered, leading the way into 
the house. 

There was a glass-enclosed nook off the dining 
room, originally designed for a conservatory, that 
Mrs. Manners had appropriated for her own par- 
ticular den, fitting it up with a couch of many pil- 
lows and a reading lamp. Here, as Tilt well knew, 
it was her custom to spend her evenings, book or 
magazine in hand. Presenting his friend to her, 
they chatted a few minutes on various topics until a 
question from Mrs. Manners gave him the lead he 
was seeking. 

“ Have they found any clues? ” she asked. 

“ No,” Tilt answered, “ there’s nothing new as 
yet, but there is something I wanted to ask you. 
Did you by chance ever know that Doctor Rhodes 
was married? Did you know his wife?” 

Both he and Devan were amazed at the result of 
his question. 

Mrs. Manners sat bolt upright, raising herself 
with a convulsive start. Her face went ghastly 
white, and her whole body seemed to stiffen. For a 
moment she sat there, her lips tensed, her eyes 
frightened, her whole manner giving them the 


A NEW MYSTERY 89 

impression that she was on guard, alert, terri- 
fied. 

“ What a funny question,” she said, speaking in 
a hard, metallic tone and evidently making the 
greatest effort to retain her self-control. “ What 
made you ask me that? ” 

“ But he had been married, hadn’t he? ” Tilt per- 
sisted. “ You’ve known Doctor Rhodes a long time, 
probably longer than any one else in Rockmont. 
You must know. There’s something that has come 
up ” — he almost let it slip about the will before he 
remembered that they had agreed to keep it secret — 
“ something that makes me believe that at some time 
Rhodes had a wife. Did he ? ” 

“ Something about his death — about his mur- 
der ? ” asked Mrs. Manners. She had risen now 
from her seat and stood facing him, frantic anxiety 
showing in her manner. 

“ Yes,” said Tilt, “ something about his murder. 
Was he married? ” 

Instead of answering him, Mrs. Manners sud- 
denly turned and sat down, burying her face in her 
hands, as if she would shut out from her memory 
something that his question had recalled. 


go TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ You mustn’t ask me that. I can’t answer it. 
I won’t,” she almost sobbed, as Tilt stood staring 
in amazement at her. Devan, although taking no 
part in the conversation, was watching her closely. 

“ But it’s important — most important,” Tilt per- 
sisted. 

“ It isn’t possible,” Mrs. Manners burst out. 
“ She didn’t do it. She couldn’t have.” 

“ Then he was married,” Devan’s voice cut in. 

“ Please, please, don’t ask me any more ques- 
tions,” begged Mrs. Manners. “ It has been such 
a distressing day. So much has happened. I 
mustn’t talk. Give me time to think. Give me till 
to-morrow. Go, won’t you, Bill, both of you — 
please go — at once. I must be alone. I must 
think. I must think what to do. I’ll answer your 
questions. I’ll tell you anything you wish to know 
to-morrow. Give me till to-morrow. She couldn’t 
have done it. It’s impossible.” 


CHAPTER VI 

SEVERAL SURPRISES 

When Tilt got up on Sunday morning, about ten 
as usual, he was amazed to discover that Devan had 
breakfasted long before and had vanished, pre- 
sumably off scouting somewhere for more facts to 
complete his picture. 

“ What time did he go out ? ” he asked the cook. 

“ It was long before eight. When I came down, 
before seven, he was sitting on the porch. I made 
him some coffee, and off he went.” 

“ He didn’t say where he was going? ” 

“ He did not.” 

“ Nor when he would return ? ” 

“ No, sir. He just drank his coffee and went.” 

Somehow Tilt felt cheated. Utterly mystified 
over Mrs. Manners’ extraordinary conduct the 
night before, he had tried in vain, as he and Devan 
walked home together, to extract the investigator’s 
theory about it, but Devan wouldn’t talk. All the 


92 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

way home he was silent, and for the next two hours 
until they went to bed he had sat silently playing 
solitaire, with his brows wrinkled in thought. Only 
once had he looked up from the cards and that was 
to ask for a railroad schedule. Tilt was certain 
that Devan had already made some deductions from 
Mrs. Manners 5 actions, and he had been looking 
forward to the morning in the hope that Devan 
would confide in him. 

After he had had his breakfast, he tried to settle 
down to the papers, but even the accounts of Doctor 
Rhodes’s murder, hinting as they did that it was the 
work of a discharged employee of the club, failed 
to hold his attention. His thoughts kept reverting 
to the peculiar wording of the will, and all at once 
he remembered that he h^d not yet informed Mollie 
that she was the legatee of the fortune. It gave 
him an excellent excuse for going over to see her. 
If he waited until afternoon, in all probability Paul 
Carew would be there, and he would have no oppor- 
tunity for seeing her alone. It had been agreed 
among them that only Mollie was to be told. 

All the way over he was trying to frame words 
in which to break the news to her, but his effort was 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 


93 


wasted. He found the Manners porch occupied 
only by the Terrible Kit and one of her chums, 
Gertie Small. They were sitting close together, ap- 
parently in a state of great excitement, and as he 
approached, he observed that they hastily concealed 
some object behind their skirts. 

“ WhereVMollie?” 

“ Oi£” said Kit. 

“ Out where?” 

“ She and Mr. Carew went off somewhere in the 

_ >> 
car. 

“ Is your mother at home ? ” he asked, visibly 
disappointed. If it were impossible for him to tell 
Mollie, as long as he was here he might just as well 
have another talk with Mrs. Manners. Probably, 
he reasoned, it had been the presence of Devan last 
night that had disconcerted her. Undoubtedly this 
morning, when he was alone with her, she would ex- 
plain everything. 

* “ Mother's gone away,” said Kit. 

“ Gone away ! ” echoed Tilt, startled. “ Where ? 
What do you mean ? ” 

, Visions of all sorts of complications arose alarm- 
ingly before him. Already people were gossiping 


94 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

about the Manners family and wondering why he 
and Ed had tried to avoid mentioning that accursed 
scrap of paper. He knew, too, that Mollie’s ap- 
pearance and statements at the inquest had started 
the tongues of gossip and scandal. If on top of all 
this Mrs. Manners herself had gone away, what 
would people think ? 

“ Where has your mother gone ? ” he repeated. 

“ I don’t know,” said Kit. “ None of us know. 
When we came downstairs this morning, there was 
a note from Mother on the table. She said in it 
that she had to go away for a few days on some 
business. She said that it was nothing for any of 
us to worry about, but she didn’t tell what it was.” 

“ Didn’t she say where she went?” Tilt asked 
again, more puzzled than ever. 

“ No, that’s all — just what I told you. It’s funny, 
though, she went off so unexpectedly. She hadn’t 
told any of us her plans — not even Ed.” 

Tilt listened, astounded, perplexed, mystified, as 
the Terrible Kit rattled on. There was no doubt 
in his mind that this unexpected departure of Mrs. 
Manners was in some way connected with the mur- 
der of Walter Rhodes. He felt sure that her de- 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 


95 

cision to make this mysterious journey had not been 
reached until after he had begun to question her 
about the marriage. There certainly had been some 
incident in Rhodes's past, some painful episode con- 
cerning a woman, with the details of which Mrs. 
Manners was acquainted. But even so, Tilt could 
find no theory to account for her marked perturba- 
tion the evening before. Why had she refused to 
answer his question? Why had she begged for 
time? Where had she gone this morning and for 
what purpose? 

More eager now than ever to find Devan and re- 
port to him this amazing new development, he turned 
to go, but to his amazement the Terrible Kit caught 
him by the sleeve and looked at him appeal- 
ingly. 

“ Bill Tilt," she said, “ you are a good friend of 
mine, aren't you ? " 

“ Why, of course, Kit," he said, wondering what 
was coming next. 

“And I can trust you ? " 

“ Sure you can." 

' “ Bill," she whispered mysteriously, “ I know 
something more about it. I've had a message." 


96 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ What on earth are you talking about ? What 
do you mean — a message from your mother?” 

“ No,” said Kit, “ not from her. It was some- 
thing vastly more important than that.” 

Tilt plumped himself down on a porch chair 
beside the two youngsters, much puzzled by 
Kit’s excited manner, and looked inquiringly at 
Gertie. 

“ It’s all right,” said Kit reassuringly, “ Gertie 
knows. We got the message together.” 

“ What message ? What do you mean ? ” 

Kit’s voice once again sank to a mysterious whis- 
per as she leaned forward excitedly: 

“A message about the murder! ” 

“A message — from whom? ” demanded Tilt. 

With a quick jerk, Kit drew aside her skirt, re- 
vealing a ouija board. 

“ Ouija told us something,” she said solemnly, 
“ something most important.” 

“ Oh, tommyrot,” laughed Tilt in relief. “ Surely 
you girls don’t take any stock in that sort of truck. 
It’s all nonsense.” 

“ It isn’t nonsense,” cried Gertie. 

“ Indeed it isn’t,” insisted Kit. “ Lots and lots 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 


97 

of times ouija has given us wonderful messages, and 
some of them have been true.” 

“ Oh, shucks,” growled Tilt; “ you’re both too big 
to swallow that sort of thing.” 

“ When things come true,” persisted Kit, “ you 
have to believe. And we did have a message — a 
message about the murder — just a few minutes 
ago, just before you came up on the porch. We 
asked the same question twice, and each time we 
got the same answer.” 

“ What was the question ? ” said Tilt, interested 
in spite of his doubts. 

“ We asked ouija, ‘Who killed Walter Rhodes? * ” 

“And what did ouija say? ” 

“ Promise you won’t tell any one. Mother 
forbade my using the ouija board, but this 
time I just had to. It was so important to find 
out.” 

“All right, I promise.” 

Still Kit hesitated, studying his face ear- 
nestly. 

“ I’m afraid to tell you, Bill. You think it all a 
big joke. But we did ask the question, and we got 
an answer — such a funny answer. We don’t know 


98 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

"what to make of it, but we feel it’s dreadfully im- 
portant. We know it means something, but prob- 
ably you’ll only laugh.” 

“ I promise not to laugh.” 

“You see,” said Kit solemnly, “we’ve got to 
tell some one about it. We couldn’t tell Mother, 
even if she were here, because she doesn’t like my 
using ouija. And you’ll see when we tell the mes- 
sage why Mollie mustn’t know about it. Ed would 
only laugh at us, so you’re the only person we can 
tell, unless we tell the police.” 

“ For heaven’s sake, don’t do that,” said Tilt, 
with visions of scareheads in all the papers over 
the Terrible Kit’s pictures. 

“We want you to promise that when we tell you, 
you’ll do something, that you’ll try to find out what 
the message means.” 

“ God knows I will do anything and everything to 
find out who killed Rhodes.” 

“ It said the same thing twice,” shrilled Gertie. 

“Yes,” reiterated Kit, “exactly the same both 
times.” 

“ What did it say ? ” 

“ It said, ‘Ask Paul Carew.’ ” 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 


99 


“ Both times the same,” repeated Gertie excitedly. 

“ Oh, nonsense,” cried Tilt. “ Kit, your mother 
is absolutely right. If you were my daughter, I’d 
spank you if you ever touched ouija. Ask Paul 
Carew — what rot ! ” 

“ I don’t care,” replied Kit, stiffening with hurt 
pride. “ That’s what the message said, and you 
promised you wouldn’t laugh and you promised 
you’d try to find out what it meant. We trusted 
you with our secret, and you’re a mean, hateful 
thing. Come on, Gertie.” 

Grabbing up their ouija board, the girls started 
into the house, but Kit paused in the door and turned 
for a parting fling: 

“Of course ouija doesn’t always tell the truth. 
Several weeks ago I kept asking, * Will Mollie 
marry Paul Carew ? ’ and every time the answer 
came, ‘ Bill Tilt,’ ‘ Bill Tilt,’ but I’m glad ouija 
doesn’t always tell the truth, for I wouldn’t let Mollie 
marry you if you were the last man on earth — so 
there!” 

As the door slammed behind the irate youngster, 
Tilt turned abruptly and started homeward, inclined 
to moralize on the foolish conduct of the young 


ioo TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


among females. Mrs. Manners was right. Kit had 
no business monkeying with that ouija board. He 
wondered if he ought not to speak to Mollie and 
Ed about her psychic venturings and have them 
make her stop it. It was all nonsense, but where 
could these two silly youngsters have got such an 
answer to their question? Probably one or the 
other of them, consciously or unconsciously, had 
manipulated the board, but even so, why had they 
brought in Carew’s name? It must have been the 
Terrible Kit. She had the stronger personality of 
the two. What could have put it into her silly head 
to write such a message about her sister’s fiance? 
Maybe she disliked him, and the dislike expressed 
itself subconsciously when she got herself into a 
semi-hysterical state. 

Half-bitterly he thought of the other message 
that she had mentioned, getting his name when she 
asked whom Mollie was to marry. That certainly 
was odd. Down in his heart, he had waked up to 
the fact that he cared for Mollie, that he had wanted 
her for a wife, before Carew had won her. If 
only 

He espied Devan half a block ahead and hurried 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 


101 


to catch up with him, eager to tell him of Mrs. 
Manners' mysterious departure. 

“ Hello, Devan," he called out, “ I’ve some news 
that will surprise you." 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Devan and waited 
for him to catch up. “ Have you just discovered 
that Mrs. Manners has gone away ? ” 

“ You know that? ” 

Devan nodded. 

“After our visit there last night and the surpris- 
ing way in which she acted when you asked about 
Rhodes's marriage, the more I pondered over it, the 
more convinced I became that she was likely to make 
a journey somewhere this morning. That's what 
I was thinking of when I asked you for a schedule." 

“ I don’t see how you could possibly have made 
any such deduction," cried Tilt in perplexity. 

“ I don't quite see myself, but I did. From her 
actions, it was evident that she knew the secret in 
Rhodes's past and must have known something about 
the woman involved. You remember her exclama- 
tion, ‘ She couldn't have done it.' It was apparent 
that she was suddenly confronted with the idea that 
the murder was done by this woman, yet for some 


102 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


reason she believed that the woman was not in a 
position to have done it. There was only one way 
in which she could satisfy herself on this point and 
that was by making a personal investigation. That 
was the mission that took her to Boston on the first 
train this morning. I saw her go.” 

“You didn’t shadow her?” There was resent- 
ment in Tilt’s tone. The idea of having his friends 
under espionage seemed repellent. 

“ Don’t worry,” Devan hastened to reassure him. 
“ It was discreetly done. She hadn’t the slightest 
idea that any one witnessed her departure.” 

“ I suppose,” said Tilt, still unmollified, “ that you 
wired on to Boston to have some one pick her up 
there and shadow her.” 

“ No,” said Devan, “ nothing like that will be 
necessary. Mrs. Manners is an intelligent, law- 
abiding sort. It is only the unintelligent who try to 
obstruct the workings of justice. As soon as she 
has returned, she will be ready to tell us everything 
she knows, or I miss my guess. She is just as 
anxious as you are to discover who murdered 
Rhodes, but she is determined to be fair-minded and 
will not let us suspect this woman, whoever she is. 


SEVERAL SURPRISES 103 

until she is sure that there is ground for suspi- 
cion.” 

“ I’m glad at any rate that you didn’t shadow 
her.” 

“ I would like to know, though,” said Devan 
thoughtfully, “ what she and old Hodder said to 
each other. She spent fifteen minutes at his cot- 
tage before she took the train this morning.” 


CHAPTER VII 

IN THE MORNING MAIL 

It wasn't until Wednesday morning — the day 
after Walter Rhodes's funeral — that Bill Tilt found 
the opportunity he had been seeking of seeing Mollie 
alone. Oversleeping, he had missed his regular 
train, the seven-fifty-three, and arrived at the station 
barely in time to get aboard the eight-thirty-six. As 
he passed down the aisle, exchanging nods with his 
various acquaintances, he was delighted to observe 
Mollie seated alone and dropped down beside her. 

“ Oh, Bill,” she exclaimed, “ I’m so glad. There’s 
something I wanted to tell you — to show you — 
something I can’t understand.” 

“And I,” said Tilt, “ have been trying for three 
days to find you alone. I've something to tell you, 
something wonderful — a tremendous surprise.” ' 

Apparently giving little heed to what he was say- 
ing, the girl had been fumbling in her bag, and now 
she brought out an envelope and offered it guardedly 
for his inspection. 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 105 

“ Look, Bill,” she whispered, “ look at what 
came to me in this morning’s mail. It’s the 
missing message, the scrap of paper that disap- 
peared.”. 

Amazed, Tilt took the envelope from her hands 
and examined its contents. It was unquestionably 
the same paper that he and Ed Manners had seen 
lying on the table, a prescription blank and written 
on it the words, “ I have waited here for you over 
ha — ” in Rhodes’s well-known hand. Frowningly, 
he studied it, turning the envelope over and over. 
There seemed little that would give any clue to the 
sender. It had been mailed in Rockmont the even- 
ing before, and on the envelope were only the words, 
“ Miss Mollie Manners,” written in the hand of 
some one little used to penmanship. It might be, 
Tilt decided, either the writing of some illiterate 
person, or an attempt to disguise some one’s pen- 
manship, but most it looked like the writing of a 
badly educated child. 

“ What do you make of it? ” whispered Mollie. 

“ I don’t know,” he answered. “ It looks like a 
child’s writing. I’d say it might have been written 
by some girl. It looks like a girl’s writing.” 


io6 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“It struck me that way, too. Whom do you 
suppose sent it to me ? ” 

There flashed into his mind what Devan had said 
about it, — that the murderer, having killed Rhodes 
and made his escape and having successfully con- 
cealed his rifle, after reaching home had suddenly 
recalled the paper on which Rhodes had been writing 
and in alarm had returned to the scene of the crime, 
fearful lest it might betray him. But if Devan's 
theory were right, why had the murderer mailed this 
scrap of paper to Mollie? What could have been 
the motive ? 

“ Was there anything else in the envelope — any 
note? ” he asked. 

“ No, that was all — just what you have there.” 

“ Have you shown it to any one else ? ” 

“ No, the postman handed it to me just as I was 
leaving the house this morning. You're the only 
person that has seen it.” 

“ Look here,” he said quickly, “ promise me that 
you will not show it to any one, not yet, at any 
rate.” 

There had come into his mind the scene on the 
Manners' porch Sunday afternoon, and the thought 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 107 

had come to him that possibly Kit, with the aid of 
her friend Gertie, in some way had retrieved the 
paper. They both, he realized, were all worked up 
about the tragedy, and there was no telling to what 
hysterical ends their doings with ouija might lead 
them. He determined to get possession in some 
way of specimens of the handwriting of both young- 
sters and decide if they had had anything to do 
with it. 

“ I wish you’d keep it, Bill,” said Mollie. “ I 
shan’t say a word to any one about it. Doctor 
Rhodes was my very best friend, and every time I 
saw that paper or thought about it, it would bring 
back his terrible end.” 

“ He was indeed your best friend,” said Tilt, “ a 
far better friend than you have any idea of.” 

“ What makes you say that ? ” 

“ We found his will Saturday afternoon. He left 
nearly a million dollars, and he left it practically all 
to you. Think of it, Mollie; he left you every- 
thing.” 

“ That would be just like him,” said Mollie softly, 
with a little quiver in her voice, “ but I’d give it 
all — every cent of it, to have him back.” 


108 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Funny thing about it, though, he made me the 
executor. I can’t understand why he did that.” 

“ I’m not surprised at that. He thought a lot of 
you. He often talked with me about you.” 

“ For certain reasons we thought it best,” Tilt 
went on, “ to keep quiet about the will for the pres- 
ent. We agreed to tell no one about the will but 
you. There was one very peculiar clause in it.” 

“ Was it,” asked Mollie, her voice breaking a 
little, “was it about his marriage — about that 
woman ? ” 

“ You knew about that? ” cried Tilt, astounded. 

“ Not everything.” 

“ Tell me about it. Tell me everything he told 
you.” 

“ Look here, Bill,” said Mollie, turning to him 
and speaking in a tense whisper. “ I’m going to tell 
you something I never have told a soul — not even 
my own mother. I was closer to Walter Rhodes, I 
think, than any one else in the world. I think he 
thought more of me than he did of any one else. 
I know he did. I thought — I still think — he was 
one of the grandest and noblest of men. There was 
once, it was years and years ago when I was 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 109 

eighteen, I thought I was in love with him. You 
know how silly and romantic girls of that age are. 
He used to take me riding with him and was always 
nice to me. To him, of course, I was still a child. 
I don’t think he had realized yet that I was growing 
up. Once ” — her cheeks turned a fiery red — 
“ once I asked him to marry me.” 

“ What — you asked Walter Rhodes to marry 
you ! ” 

“ It sounds terribly foolish now, but that’s what 
I did. It was then that he told me about it.” 

“ Told you what? ” 

“About his marriage. It seems that years and 
years ago, when he was a young surgeon in the 
navy, he met a beautiful girl and became wildly in- 
fatuated with her. He courted her arduously for 
two weeks, and then they were married. Right 
after that he was ordered to the Philippines and was 
gone for two years. The first year he was away, 
there was a child. He was reported killed, and for 
months nothing was heard of him. He had been 
wandering in the bush for months, insane from a 
blow on the head, cared for by the natives, I guess. 
When they found him, it was a long time before he 


no TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


was well. They took out the bone that was pressing 
on his brain. He came home, still crazy in love 
with his wife, and found her married to another 
man.” 

“ How terrible for him.” 

“ I don’t know just what happened after that. 
Of course, there was a terrible scene and they sepa- 
rated. My father wanted him to get a divorce, but 
he wouldn’t do it. I think he still loved her. I be- 
lieve he loved her to the day of his death.” 

“ What became of the woman? ” 

“ I don’t know. He didn’t tell me that.” 

“And the child — what became of it? ” 

“ I don’t know. I think my father knew, and 
perhaps my mother knows something about it. Of 
course, I never talked with them about it.” 

“ I’m sure your mother knows. That’s why she 
has gone away — at least that’s what Devan thinks.” 

“Mr. Devan — I don’t understand. What has 
he to do with it ? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve been intending to tell you about him. 
Pressly Hart thought the murder was so mysterious 
that the club ought to make its own investigations, 
so he hired Devan to conduct it.” 


IN THE MORNING MAIL in 


“ I thought he was a friend of yours.” 

“ He is. I didn’t know he was on the case till we 
met at Rhodes’s house. I saw a lot of him in 
France. He’s a regular wizard at finding things 
out.” 

“ I do hope,” said Mollie with a sigh, “ he finds 
out soon who murdered Doctor Rhodes. It’s a 
terrible strain, this waiting and wondering.” 

“ He has found out a lot already. He had old 
Hodder up at the house and questioned him. He 
wouldn’t talk much, yet from what he said we are 
convinced that he knew Rhodes’s secret. It’s prac- 
tically certain, too, that your mother knows that 
Hodder knew.” 

“ Mother — Hodder ” exclaimed Mollie per- 

plexedly. “ Why, I didn’t suppose she knew there 
was any such person as Hodder; she hardly ever 
goes near the club.” 

“ She knew Hodder, just the same. The fact is, 
she spent fifteen minutes or so at his shack yester- 
day morning before she went away.” 

“ What can it all mean — Mother talking with old 
Hodder — I don’t understand.” 

“No more do I. Both your brother and I, right 


U2 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


from the start, have been positive that it was a man 
who murdered Doctor Rhodes. A woman would 
not have used a rifle. Nor is it likely that Rhodes 
would have been meeting a woman at that hour in 
the morning. He was not that sort." 

“ I wonder — could it have been ” — there was 
horror at the thought in Mollie’s tone — “ could 
it have been that woman's child ? ” 

“ That's just a possibility," ventured Tilt. “ Per- 
haps your mother can tell us something when she 
returns. I am positive her sudden trip was 
connected with the secret in Doctor Rhodes's 
life." 

The train was now nearing the terminal. In a 
few minutes Tilt and Mollie would be separating, 
he to his business and she to her shopping, yet it did 
not seem to Tilt that he had had half long enough 
with her to talk things over. 

“ Tell me," said Mollie, as people began gathering 
up their parcels, “ what have the police done ? " 

“ They have Gus Pincus locked up. The only 
charge against him so far is drunkenness and dis- 
orderly conduct. They probably will try to make 
out a case against him." 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 113 

“ We must not let them do that,” said the girl 
determinedly. “ He had nothing to do with it.” 

“ No,” agreed Tilt. “ I think you are right 
about that. It is just as well, though, to let them 
use him for a stalking horse for a few days. It 
will serve to draw attention away from ” 

“ From the Manners family, I suppose you 
mean,” she finished, as he hesitated. 

“ No, from what Devan is doing.” 

“ Paul says every one in the village is gossiping 
about us already. He still is furious at me because 
I talked at the inquest. He has been trying to get 
me to promise him that I will take no part in the 
investigation. He even urged me to go away for a 
while. He dreads all the publicity.” 

“ But you’re not going? ” 

There was sharp dismay in Bill Tilt’s voice. The 
very thought of Rockmont without Mollie appalled 
him. More and more each day he was realizing 
how much her companionship meant to him. The 
prospect of life at Rockmont after Paul Carew 
had married her and taken her away loomed up 
very drab and dreary. 

“ Of course I’m not going away, Billy. Do you 


U4 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

think I care what people say, or how much I get 
mixed up in the case, if only the doctor’s murderer 
is discovered and punished. Oh, I wish I knew 
who was guilty — who committed such a brutal, 
cowardly crime. ,, 

“ Devan suggests that it might have been a mem- 
ber of the club ” 

“ Not one of us,” cried the girl incredulously. 

“ Yes, he pointed out that the murderer must have 
been some one familiar with Doctor Rhodes’s habits 
and with the club. He must have known that 
Rhodes carried a key to the clubhouse. It must 
have been some one Rhodes knew and knew well, or 
he hardly would have gone out at that hour for a 
meeting. Really, circumstances do point to some 
club member.” 

“ Or to a club servant.” 

“ There are only two — Pincus, whom Rhodes 
discharged and old Hodder.” 

“ I’m certain it wasn’t poor harmless old Gus. " 
He might steal, but he never would kill anybody.” 

“ I know it wasn’t old Hodder. He would have 
laid down his life for Rhodes.” 

“ I can’t conceive,” said Mollie thoughtfully, “ of 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 115 

his making a date with either of them at one o’clock 
in the morning. It was neither of them.” 

As they made their way out of the train, there 
was little opportunity for further conversation, and 
at the street their ways parted. 

“ Look here,” said Tilt, “ when am I going to get 
another chance to see you alone and talk about 
things ? I want to read that will to you.” 

“ Come over this evening.” 

“ But won’t Carew be there ? ” 

“ No, Paul has gone away. He said last night he 
was leaving on the midnight train for Boston and 
might have to be away for several days.” 

“ Fine,” cried Tilt, delighted at the news. “ I’ll 
be over to-night right after dinner.” 

Light-hearted at the prospect of so soon having 
another opportunity of seeing her alone again, he 
left her at the Avenue, and hurrying on across 
Forty-second Street at Sixth Avenue, was held up 
by the traffic. As he waited on the curb, his mind 
still absorbed with the puzzling tragedy that had 
shocked their little community, a taxicab passed, 
going north. In it were a man and a woman 
engaged in earnest conversation. In that trance-like 


n6 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

condition that often accompanies mental concentra- 
tion, Tilt saw them with his eyes, in fact looked 
directly at them, but unrecognizingly, until his sub- 
conscious mind began hammering a warning at 
him. 

He looked again at them, this time consciously, 
and gasped in amazement. In the taxicab that went 
whirling on by was Paul Carew, who only a few 
hours before had told Mollie that he was taking the 
midnight train to Boston. 

Tilt stood staring after the cab perplexedly. 
What could it mean? Why had Carew lied to 
Mollie? Why had he spoken of going away and 
then not gone? What could have been his motive 
for deceiving her? While inclined to be a little 
jealous of Carew, and conscious now that from the 
first he had neither wholly liked nor wholly trusted 
the man, Tilt still was loath to believe him a delib- 
erate liar. Yet what else was there for him to 
think about it? It certainly had been Paul Carew 
in that cab. 

And the woman with him, the woman with whom 
Carew had been conversing so earnestly. Who was 
she? What could that mean? Tilt, as he recalled 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 117 

the scene, was certain that her face was familiar, 
that she was some one he knew and had talked with, 
but whom ? 

All at once it came to him — the amazing knowl- 
edge of who she was — the woman he and Devan 
had talked to for an hour hardly two days ago, — 
Rose Addison. 

Though he had caught just a passing glimpse of 
her face, Tilt was positive as to her identity. But 
what could this new development mean? What 
angle of the mystery could thus have brought to- 
gether Rhodes’s trusted office attendant and Paul 
Carew? Were they old acquaintances? Why had 
Carew made up an elaborate story about going to 
Boston and then not gone ? Why was he riding up 
Sixth Avenue with Miss Addison, when he was 
supposed to be in Boston? About what had they 
been talking so earnestly? 

Perhaps, though, Tilt tried to think, there was a 
possibility that Carew, seeking to solve the mystery 
on his own hook, had discovered Miss Addison as 
Devan had done? He tried to persuade himself 
that this was the logical explanation of Carew’s 
acquaintance with the nurse. He reasoned that if 


n8 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


he and not Carew were Mollie’s fiance, he would 
have left no stone unturned to try to discover who 
it was that had murdered one of her best friends; 
yet his arguments failed to convince himself. 

He felt there was something suspicious — some- 
thing wrong — something about Paul Carew’s con- 
duct that should be investigated. 

All through the day he gave little thought to his 
business. His mind kept reverting to the new prob- 
lems that had presented themselves in the mystery. 
Again and again he found himself wondering about 
Carew, though his sense of fair-mindedness inclined 
him to attribute his suspicions of Carew’s conduct 
to his own jealousy. 

All through the afternoon he kept watching the 
clock, waiting for the time to come when he should 
start for home ; he planned to go out on the five-ten, 
which he guessed would be the train on which Mollie 
would return. 

As he walked to the station three questions kept 
recurring to his mind, — questions to which he 
could find no logical answers, yet questions which 
he felt must be answered before the mystery of the 
murder was solved. 


IN THE MORNING MAIL 119 

What was the mystery in Rhodes's life that was 
shared by old Hodder and Mrs. Manners ? 

Who could it have been that had mailed the 
missing message to Mollie, and for what reason had 
it been mailed to her, of all persons ? 

And why had Paul Carew lied to her about going 
to Boston? 


CHAPTER VIII 

GROUND FOR SUSPICION 

There was a chance that Mollie might be going 
out on the same train. That was the thought in 
Tilt’s head, as in true commuter fashion he rushed 
through the station with hardly a second to spare 
and flung himself on the last car. Making sure 
she was not in that car, he began a march through 
the long train, studying the backs of all the passen- 
gers, half-hoping, half-f earing that he might find 
her. 

If she should happen to be there, he was bothered 
about just what he ought to say to her. It hardly 
seemed right to keep from her the news of his dis- 
covery. If Carew were deceiving her, she surely 
ought to know it. That Mollie’s fiance had delib- 
erately lied to her about going to Boston was Tilt’s 
firm conviction, and common sense argued that it 
would be better for Mollie to learn that Carew was 
untrustworthy now, before her marriage, than when 
it was too late. 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 121 


Yet how was he to tell her? He couldn’t. It 
would be the act of a cad. Yet, on the other hand, he 
argued with himself, there were the long years 
of friendship between them. He had been almost 
like a brother to her. Surely that gave him the 
right to speak. If he didn’t tell her, who 
would ? 

Still arguing the question with himself as he 
finished his journey through the train without find- 
ing her, he flung himself into the only half-seat 
vacant in the smoker, only to discover, somewhat to 
his annoyance, that the occupant of the other half 
of the seat was Smithers, the village grocer and 
police chief. 

“ S'pose you’ve heard the news, Mr. Tilt,” Smith- 
ers began. “We had to let that fellow Pincus go 
this morning. They alibied him out of the murder. 
All that night he was drunk and blind to the world 
in the Dutchman’s place. There was six or eight 
people that saw him there. Tough place that is, 
but being just outside the town limits, it ain’t none 
of my business what goes on there.” 

“Of course they let Pincus go,” said Tilt. “ I 
knew he was no murderer.” 


122 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ We’ve got some new clues, though, good ones,” 
Smithers continued. 

“ What are they? ” 

“ I ain’t telling them yet,” said the grocer mysteri- 
ously, “ but between you and I, Mr. Tilt, it’s my 
private opinion that when the murderer is found, 
it’ll be one of Rhodes’s own friends, somebody right 
there in Rockmont, more’n likely somebody right in 
the club.” 

“ Somebody in the club — our club,” echoed Tilt, 
more perturbed than he would have let Smithers 
know at hearing him proclaim the same thing that 
Devan had suggested. 

“ Yes, siree,” said Smithers, letting his voice sink 
to a whisper, as he bent toward Tilt confidentially, 
“ it wouldn’t surprise me if that there Manners 
family wasn’t connected up with it, not that I’m say- 
ing that any of them done it.” 

“ What makes you think that ? ” said Tilt, steel- 
ing himself to make his voice sound natural, al- 
though inwardly he was boiling with rage and in- 
dignation at the suggestion. He was determined, 
however, to make the most of his opportunity and 
to try to worm from Smithers all that he knew or 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 123 

thought he knew about the case. While he re- 
sented, as he would if his own family had been 
involved, this ridiculous effort of the village police 
to fasten the crime on the Manners family, he was 
wise enough to see that his best policy would be to 
keep cool and find out all he could from the grocer. 

“ What have you found out ? ” he asked. 

“Well, there’s that girl — the oldest one — her 
and Rhodes was extra good friends. I’ve seen them 
lots of times riding around together. She was there 
at the clubhouse early that morning.” 

“ She came there to meet me — to play tennis.” 

“ Yes, I know that’s what you both said, but she 
was there before you, and I venture to say you don’t 
know for how long. Then there was that slip of 
paper the kid sister of hers let slip about. Ed 
Manners acted mighty funny about that, trying to 
make out like he thought you took it. Then, on top 
of that, Mrs. Manners — the old lady — disappears, 
and now Ed’s gone.” 

“ What,” cried Tilt, “ Ed Manners gone away.” 

“Yep,” said Smithers, nodding his head satis- 
fiedly. “ My daughter, Clara, works in the ’phone 
exchange. A long-distance call come in for him 


124 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

this morning from Boston. ’Twas his mother that 
was talking to him. My girl didn’t know that I had 
Ed Manners under suspicion and didn’t listen in, so 
she doesn’t know what they was talking about, but 
when she came home at noon, she just happened to 
mention it. Right away I smelled a rat, and I 
hustled into town and went right down to Manners’ 
office. I ain’t saying I’d have arrested him if he’d 
been there, but I was going to question him. I was 
too late and missed him. They said he’d gone out 
of town on the eleven o’clock train, and nobody 
seemed to know where he’d gone or when he was 
expected back.” 

“ Probably he’s just off on a business trip,” Tilt 
suggested, eager to allay Smithers’ suspicions, al- 
though himself vastly puzzled by the news. That 
Mrs. Manners herself should have unexpectedly gone 
on a journey was perplexing enough, but her send- 
ing for Ed to join her surely indicated that some- 
thing important must have happened. As he hur- 
ried homeward, he was hoping that Devan would 
be there when he arrived. There were many 
new developments that he wished to discuss with 
him. 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 125 

To his annoyance, on reaching home, the cook 
informed him that Devan had telephoned, saying 
that he might be a little late for dinner. Impa- 
tiently awaiting his guest’s arrival, Tilt sat on the 
porch trying to assemble the new facts he had 
learned and to piece them together so as to make 
them mean something, but in vain. 

An inspiration came to him. He remembered the 
telephone number where Devan had reached Rose 
Addison. He would call her up and ask her about 
Paul Carew. 

Miss Addison herself answered his call. 

“ Oh, Miss Addison,” he said. “ This is Mr. 
Tilt, Bill Tilt of Rockmont — You met me ” 

“ Oh, yes, I remember you. Have you learned 
anything new? Have you found the man who did 
it?” 

“ No, but there’s something I wanted to ask you. 
How long have you known Mr. Carew? ” 

“ Carew — I don’t know any one named Ca- 
rew.” 

“ Paul Carew,” repeated Tilt, surprised. “ You 
know him, don’t you ? ” 

“ Never heard of him in my life. Who is he? ” 


126 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

came the prompt response, and amazed though Tilt 
was by it, still he recognized in her tones, even over 
the telephone, the ring of truth. 

“ But I saw you with him,” he expostulated ex- 
citedly, “ only this morning, going up Sixth Avenue 
in a taxicab.” 

“ I did that all right,” she replied, “ but the gen- 
tleman with me wasn't Mr. Carew. It was Mr. 
Raymond of the Trust Company.” 

“ I guess I must have been mistaken,” said Tilt 
weakly, as he rang off. 

More perplexed than ever, he returned to his seat 
on the porch. Despite her denial that she knew 
Carew, he was positive he had not been mistaken. 
From her manner he was almost convinced that Miss 
Addison might have believed that her companion was 
“ Mr. Raymond of the Trust Company.” But who 
was Mr. Raymond ? Was it a name that Carew had 
assumed in making Miss Addison's acquaintance, 
and if so, what had been his purpose? He won- 
dered if there really were any person of that name. 
The longer he thought about it, the more mystified 
he became. His first impression of Miss Addison 
had been that she was wholly to be trusted. Could 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 127 

it be that both he and Devan had been mistaken in 
her? 

Seven o’clock, the hour for dinner, came and 
went. Devan had not yet arrived. At seven-thirty 
Tilt, deciding to wait no longer for him and mindful 
of the engagement that he had made with Mollie to 
read her the will, ordered the cook to serve his 
dinner. To his annoyance there was still further 
delay, and it was nearly eight before the food was 
brought on the table. 

Wondering what could be keeping Devan, he sat 
down alone, hungry and out of temper with every- 
thing, and just then the telephone rang. Thinking 
of course it must be Devan, with further apologies 
for his tardiness, he sprang up to answer it. It was 
the telegraph operator at the station. 

“ Telegram for William Tilt,” she announced. 

“ This is Tilt. Go ahead,” he answered, half ex- 
pecting that it might be some word from Mrs. 
Manners or Ed. 

“ It’s dated Stamford. ‘ Gone to Boston on im- 
portant business.’ Signed ‘ Dick.’ ” 

“All right,” he answered. 

“ You understand it? ” queried the operator. 


128 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, as he hung up 
the ’phone and sat down to his chilling soup. 

He didn’t understand it at all. First it was Mrs. 
Manners who had departed mysteriously, and then 
Ed and now 'Devan. What was happening? 
Surely he had a right to know. His friendship with 
the Manners family certainly should entitle him 
to their confidence. Besides, was he not the ex- 
ecutor of Walter Rhodes’s will? That in itself, he 
reasoned, gave him a right to know all the moves 
that were being made in the case. 

But particularly with Devan did he feel exasper- 
ated. They had been working together, and he had 
told Devan everything he knew. “ It was a dirty 
trick of Dick’s,^ he growled to himself, “ to go off 
this way.” There were so many new angles de- 
veloping right here at home that demanded Devan’s 
attention. 

There was the missing message that had been 
mailed to Mollie. There was Carew’s strange con- 
duct, telling Mollie that he was going to Boston, 
and then not going. Then, too, what had Carew 
been doing in Miss Addison’s company? And why 
had Miss Addison denied knowing Carew ? 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 129 

As he pondered over all these unanswered ques- 
tions, vague alarm began to possess him. He re- 
called the certainty with which Smithers had ex- 
pressed the belief that the Manners family was in 
some way concerned in Walter Rhodes’s death. Of 
course, the very idea was absurd, but — what could 
have been the mission that had taken them all to 
Boston ? 

At any rate, he felt positive that Mollie knew 
nothing about it. Her mother more than likely was 
the custodian of the secret in Rhodes’s life, and 
perhaps she had shared it with her son, but Mollie, 
he still felt confident, had been entirely frank with 
him. And as his thoughts turned to his conversa- 
tion with her, he hastily finished his solitary meal. 
She would be expecting him, and first he would have 
to stop at the doctor’s house and get the will out of 
the safe. Fortunately he had the combination. 
John Dixon had turned over to him as executor the 
slip containing the figures. Stopping only long 
enough to get the figures out of his desk, he set out 
for Rhodes’s house. 

As he neared a corner where he would turn into 
the lane leading to the house, he saw advancing 


130 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

through the gathering darkness a slender figure and 
would have passed it by, had not a hand reached out 
and clutched his arm. 

“ Oh, Bill,” cried a voice gleefully, “ I’m so glad I 
met you.” 

He groaned inwardly. It was the Terrible Kit. 

“ You remember,” she cried excitedly, “ that mes- 
sage I told you we got. I’ve just been over to 
Gertie Small’s house, and we’ve had another one — 
another message.” 

“ Tommy rot,” exclaimed Tilt. “ I haven’t any 
time to listen to such nonsense. Run along 
home.” 

“ Where are you going? I’ll go with you,” said 
Kit calmly, falling into step beside him. “ I’ve got 
to tell somebody about it, and as we told you about 
the other message, you just must listen to this.” 

“ You can’t come. I’m going over to Doctor 
Rhodes’s house to get some papers.” 

“ Why shouldn’t I ? There’s nobody there now 
but old Mrs. Grady.” 

“All right, come on then,” said Tilt crossly, know- 
ing from experience that it would be hard to shake 
off the Terrible Kit if once she made up her mind 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 131 

to accompany him. “ Fire away — what was the 
message this time ? ” 

“ Now remember,” warned Kit gravely, “ you 
promised the last time not to laugh at us, and you 
did. I hate you for it, but I’ve got to tell it. It 
sounds dreadfully important.” 

“ Fire away. I promise not to laugh.” 

“ Well, I was over at Gertie’s house and there 
was nobody there but us and we were talking about 
the murder and all at once an uncanny feeling came 
over us. It was just as if some one was trying to 
talk to us and couldn’t. We both felt a presence, 
just as plain. We didn’t have a ouija board there — 
Gertie’s mother burned hers up — but we both of 
us just knew there was somebody there trying to 
talk to us — to tell us something.” 

“And what did you do? ” asked Tilt, his curiosity 
aroused in spite of his disbelief. 

“We got a pad and paper and Gertie took a pencil 
in her hand and then we turned out the lights. I 
put my hand around her wrist and held it and we 
both sat there waiting — waiting. By and by it 
seemed as if we could feel the Presence nearer and 
nearer and we got all tingly and it was all we could 


132 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

do to keep from shrieking. Then something hap- 
pened.” 

“ What was it ? What happened ? ” 

“All at once the pencil in Gertie's hand began to 
move. She tried to hold it still but the power kept 
moving it and moving it all over the paper. We 
both of us sat there just too scared to breathe and 
all at once it stopped. We just sat there terrified 
for ever and ever so long and by and by I got up 
courage enough to turn on the lights.” Kit lowered 
her voice to a mysterious whisper. “And we read 
the message.” 

“ What did it say? ” 

“ Scrawled all over the paper in funny looking 
writing — it didn't look a bit like either Gertie's or 
mine — were the words, * find the girl,' ‘ find the 
girl ’ — just that and nothing else.” 

“And what do you think it means? ” Tilt asked, 
mentally determining that as soon as Kit's mother 
came home she should be informed about these 
nerve-wracking venturings of Kit's into the spirit 
world. 

“I don't know,” said Kit impressively. “You 
remember the other message about Paul Carew. 


GROUND FOR SUSPICION 133 

Gertie and I have decided that in some way Paul and 
some girl are mixed up in the case. If only we 
could find the girl, maybe we could solve the mys- 
tery. You will help us, won't you, Bill ? ” 

As they talked, they had come close to the Rhodes 
house, passing between two tall rows of poplars that 
marked the path to the front door. The front of the 
building, with the blinds tightly drawn, presented a 
gloomy and forbidding aspect, reminiscent in its very 
appearance of the tragedy that had befallen its late 
occupant. 

“ Let's go round to the back door,” suggested Kit. 
“ We’ll probably find Mrs. Grady in the kitchen.” 

With Kit still hanging on to his arm, he made his 
way around the side of the house. As he did so, a 
ray of light coming from a side window of the 
front room caught his eye, and stopping quickly, he 
detected the movement of some one in the room. 

“ There's a man in there,” whispered Kit. 

His own first impression confirmed, they both 
crept softly up to the window for a better view, for 
the blind here had been drawn to, leaving only a 
scant inch at the bottom. 

Curiously they peered into the room, wondering 


134 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

who the man was and what business he could have 
at this hour in a house supposed now to be tenanted 
only by the old housekeeper. 

“ Oh, look,” cried Kit in a tense whisper. “ 
trying to open the safe.” 


He’s 


CHAPTER IX 
A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 

The first sensation of which Tilt was conscious 
when he realized what the intruder was doing was 
one of indignation. Burglary was unheard of in 
Rockmont. What with the murder and everything, 
the whole place seemed all at once to be going to the 
devil. But quick on the heels of this thought came 
a sharp realization of his own carelessness, coupled 
with bitter self-reproach. Rhodes’s will had made 
him the legal custodian of Mollie’s fortune. Much 
of it was in negotiable securities right there in that 
safe. He ought to have known better than to leave 
so much valuable property with no one but the old 
housekeeper to guard it. 

Of course, only John Dixon and Pressly Hart and 
himself — and, to be sure, Richard Devan — had 
known of the wealth concealed there, but then some 
one of them might have tattled to his wife. There 
was a possibility that by now the whole village knew 
about it. It was sheer carelessness on his part. 

All these thoughts flashed through his mind in the 


136 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

second he stood there stupidly, watching the man at 
the safe, then came the galvanizing thought that 
something must be done about it — at once. 

“ Quick,” he whispered to Kit. “ We’ve got to 
capture him. We’ll slip around to the back of the 
house. Probably he got in that way. Maybe he 
has left the door there open for his get away. You 
stand guard there, and I’ll slip in and nab him.” 

“ Oh, Bill,” moaned Kit in a scared whisper, as 
they ran, “I’m scared. Maybe he’ll — he’ll kill 
you.” 

“ Nonsense,” said Tilt. “ I’ll grab him before he 
knows I’m there.” 

“ But — but — there may be two of them,” blub- 
bered the terrified youngster. “ Oh, Bill, please, 
please, let’s go for help.” 

“And let him get away,” scoffed Bill. “ I’ll take 
the chance that he is alone.” 

Though far from being anything of a coward, 
Kit’s suggestion that there might be more than one 
of the burglars had for a second given Tilt some- 
thing of a shock, and he found himself vainly wish- 
ing that he had a revolver with him. 

He realized that he would have to trust to a 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 137 

surprise attack. The glimpse he had had through 
the window had revealed a tall, powerful, roughly 
dressed figure, with a dark hat or cap pulled well 
down over his eyes. And there might be two, but 
he must take a chance. Gathering wrath at this in- 
truder, this robber who was planning to plunder 
Mollie of her fortune, seemed to add to his strength. 
He wanted to get his hand around the fellow’s neck, 
to strangle him, to punish him for his temerity. 

As they reached the porch in the rear, they found 
the kitchen door standing wide open, which was 
almost to be expected. It was quite within possi- 
bilities that Mrs. Grady might have gone off to the 
village and left it that way. Half the people in 
Rockmont went to bed at night leaving their doors 
and windows unlocked, such was their confidence in 
the peace and quiet of the little colony. 

“ Stand here and keep your eyes open,” he whis- 
pered to the trembling Kit, as he shook off her clutch- 
ing hand and slipped noiselessly in at the kitchen 
door. The room was in darkness. For an instant 
he stood there stock-still, listening but hearing no 
sound, trying to visualize the arrangement of the 
rooms in the house. In the left corner, as he re- 


i 3 8 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

called it, there was a door that led into a butler’s 
pantry, which opened into the dining room. Be- 
tween the dining room and the room where the 
burglar was ran a wide hall. 

Noiselessly but swiftly he crept through the 
kitchen, cautiously pushing open the swinging door 
of the pantry and holding it so that it would make no 
sound behind him. On through the dining room, 
step by step, he advanced, feeling his way, his pres- 
ence still undiscovered. As he reached the hall, the 
door into which stood open, he became aware of a 
dim light ahead, apparently a reflection from the 
pocket flashlight the burglar was using. 

Poised on tiptoe, he paused again to listen. 

He could hear a slight sliding sound, the noise 
made by the burglar as he turned the safe knob this 
way and that on the dial, seeking the click that 
would give him the clue to the combination. Still 
Tilt listened, straining his ears to catch the sound 
of breathing, wondering not without trepidation if 
in the darkness ahead of him there was one man — 
or two. Apparently there was only one, and with a 
feeling of relief, he moved once more swiftly for- 
ward. 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 139 

Still unnoticed by the burglar, he reached the door- 
way of the room where the man was at work. Tilt, 
from where he stood, could see the man plainly now, 
still on his knees, intent on the safe before him, the 
radiating rays of his flashlight making a murky 
halo about him, although all the rest of the room 
was shrouded in darkness. 

Crouching with muscles tensed, gauging the dis- 
tance with his eye, Tilt sprang for him, — only to 
come crashing to the floor with a terrifying racket. 
He had come to grief on a small tabouret that the 
burglar, as a precaution against being surprised, had 
thoughtfully placed between the scene of his activ- 
ities and the doorway. 

Instantly the flash went out. Tilt, as he strug- 
gled desperately to regain his footing, heard a mut- 
tered oath from the burglar and a frightened cry 
from Kit. Recovering himself as quickly as he 
could, he sprang to the door, intent on blocking the 
man’s escape, but realized at once that he was too 
late, that the man had slipped by him in the darkness 
as he lay prostrate. He could hear the thud of 
running feet in the hallway, and he turned in pur- 
suit. 


140 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

Again there rose from the terrified Kit, out on the 
porch, a frightened cry: 

“ Bill, Bill, where are you? What’s happened? 
Are you hurt ? ” 

Desperately he dashed on in pursuit. At the 
pantry he was close behind his quarry, but the door 
swinging back in his face delayed his progress just 
long enough to enable the man ahead of him to 
reach the kitchen door. 

Roughly thrusting Kit to one side, the man sprang 
off the side of the porch and vanished in the 
shrubbery. 

Kit, now shrieking at the top of her voice, clutched 
desperately at Tilt as he emerged, but, shaking her 
off, he ran on in pursuit, intent only on capturing 
his man. As he plunged through the shadows in 
the direction he imagined the man had taken, he 
tripped on something or somebody in the bushes, 
and all but fell a second time. The impression 
he received was that a foot had deliberately been 
thrust out in his path, with the intention of 
tripping him. Quickly recovering his balance, he 
turned to grapple with his assailant, whoever it had 
been. 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 141 

To his wonderment he found his arms encircling a 
slender, girlish figure. 

Realizing that the delay had served its purpose 
and that further pursuit of the fugitive would be 
fruitless, in spite of his bewilderment, he held tightly 
to his captive, feeling sure she was a confederate of 
the burglar, and began dragging her back to the 
kitchen porch. 

“ For God's sake, Kit,” he commanded roughly, 
“ stop that screeching and find where the lights turn 
on. I've got one of them.” 

As he waited for the lights, still clutching his 
captive, he could feel her heart pounding in fright 
against his body and could hear her breathing in 
quick, convulsive jerks, though she uttered no word. 
Confident that he had captured a sentinel the burglar 
had posted, he determined to make every effort to 
extract from her the man’s identity. He felt that in 
her lay the only possible clue to his capture. As Kit 
at last found the place to turn on the lights, he half- 
dragged, half-carried the girl across the porch and 
into the kitchen, and thrusting her into a chair 
and still holding her by one arm, turned to look at 
her. 


142 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

He found himself gazing into the black, limpid, 
frightened eyes of a pretty Italian girl, perhaps 
seventeen, whose great shock of hair, loosened in his 
struggle with her, had come tumbling about her 
chalky face. 

“ Who was the man — that man who got away ? ” 
he demanded. 

“ Why, Bill,” cried Kit, “ I know this girl. It’s 
Conchita.” 

As Kit recognized her, the girl, pulling her arm 
loose from Tilt’s grasp, covered her face with her 
hands and began to weep audibly, violently. 

“ Who’s Conchita ? ” Tilt asked wonderingly. 

“ She’s old Marta’s daughter. She lives down in 
the village. I went one year to the public school 
for a month or two, and she was in my class.” 

As Tilt looked at the weeping girl, his anger to- 
ward her vanished. After all, she was only a 
youngster, a mere child. If some evil-minded per- 
son had persuaded her to join in the burglary, she 
surely was far from being a hardened criminal. It 
would, he felt sure, be comparatively easy to learn 
from her all she knew about the attempted robbery. 
Soothingly he began to comfort her, and as she be- 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 143 

came calmer, to question her about her presence 
there. 

“ I come to see Miss Grady,” she insisted. “ I 
see a light in the house and a man there. I got 
scared and hide in the bushes.” 

Try as he could, that was all Tilt could get out 
of her, and she was firm in her denial that she knew 
who the man was, calling on the Virgin and all of 
the saints to attest that she was telling the truth. 
While he still was questioning her, Mrs. Grady ar- 
rived, out of breath, indignant, and much perplexed. 
With many an exclamation she listened wonderingly 
to Tilt's narrative of what had happened in her ab- 
sence. 

“ It's meself that was called away by the tili- 
phone,” she explained volubly. “ Nora Dolan — 
her that lives at the other end of the village and used 
to be Father Riley's housekeeper — my own cousin 
once removed, was hurted, so they said, and was 
asking for me.” 

“ Who said it ? ” asked Tilt eagerly. “ Who 
called you on the 'phone ? ” 

“ It was a man's voice — the doctor, he said he 
was — and he said Nora was hurted bad, and when 


144 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

I got there there was nothing the matter with her at 
all, at all, and she never had sent for me.” 

“ Did you close and lock the kitchen door when 
you went out? ” 

“ It's that rattled I was I couldn't be saying for 
sure. Belike I left it just the way it was, standing 
wide open." 

“ This girl here — do you know her ? ” 

“ Do I know her ? ” the old woman bent down and 
scanned the face under the tumbled hair. “ Sure, 
and I know her well. It’s Conchita Burreli. One 
of the doctor's patients, she was, God rest his soul. 
She's often after coming here.” 

Her friendship with Mrs. Grady confirmed, Tilt 
began to fear that he might have been overhasty in 
judging the girl. At least her tale had all the ear- 
marks of probability. While it was obvious that the 
telephone call had been a ruse to make sure that Mrs. 
Grady would be out of the way, it seemed entirely 
likely that the girl's presence in the bushes was a 
coincidence. At any rate, since both Kit and Mrs. 
Grady knew her and knew where she lived, it would 
be an easy matter at any time to investigate her 
story further. The pressing problem that now con- 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 145 

fronted him was what to do with the securities in the 
safe. 

He had made up his mind, after listening to Mrs. 
Grady's story, that it was unsafe to leave them 
where they were, even for a single night longer. 
But where could he find a safe place to put them at 
this hour of the night? Ah, the station-master's 
strong box at the station ! 

That was the very place for them. Right now 
he would seal them up in a package and take them 
over there and leave them. In the morning he 
would take them into the city with him and place 
them in a safe-deposit box. 

Wonderingly the Terrible Kit watched him as he 
opened the safe. One document only he left out of 
the parcel, — the will. That he slipped into his 
pocket to show to Mollie. 

“ What's that paper ? " asked Kit curiously. 
“ What are you going to do with that ? ” 

“That is Doctor Rhodes’s will,” he explained. 
“ He made me his executor.” 

It was none of Kit’s business, he felt, and ordi- 
narily he would have told her so, but somehow the 
exciting events they had been through together 


146 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

seemed to have brought them into closer and more 
mutually appreciative relations. After all, Kit was 
a game little thing, even if she always were telling 
him that she hated him. 

“ Who’d he leave his money to ? ” 

“ I can’t tell you that. It’s a secret.” 

“ Do you suppose that was why he was killed — 
because of the way he left his money? ” questioned 
Kit, her vivid imagination already at work. She 
just revelled in mysteries. 

“ No, of course not,” said Bill bluntly, but as he 
trudged over to the station, with Kit still sticking at 
his side, her question turned his thoughts in a new 
direction. 

Was it possible, he wondered, that the doctor’s 
will had supplied the motive for his murder ? There 
might have been some one who had expected to in- 
herit his wealth, and learning of his intention to 
leave everything to Mollie Manners, had made away 
with him in an effort to thwart his plans. Perhaps 
the murderer, learning too late that the will already 
had been signed, had made a desperate attempt to 
open the safe in order to destroy it. Tilt cursed 
himself for the stupid way in which he had permitted 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 147 

the burglar to escape unidentified. If he could only 
identify the man, he might be in a position to solve 
the murder. 

But who was there who could have hoped to have 
profited by Rhodes's death? It must have been 
some relative. But what relatives had he except 
that mysterious wife from whom he had been sep- 
arated for so many years? It might have been 
her — or her child. 

That child must be a man grown by now. 

The longer he pondered over this theory, the more 
probable it seemed to be. If only there were some 
one with whom he could discuss it — Devan, for in- 
stance. If Mrs. Manners would only return and 
tell him what she knew of the secret in Rhodes's 
life, he began to feel confident that he quickly could 
locate the murderer. The doctor's child — that's 
who it must have been ! 

His precious parcel safely deposited with the sta- 
tion-master, he walked back with Kit to her home. 

“ What do you know about Conchita ? " he asked. 

“ She's a bad girl," answered Kit promptly. 

“ What do you mean ? " 

“ She had a baby, and she isn't married," Kit 


148 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

answered with amazing frankness. She was the 
one member of the family who kept well posted on 
village affairs. 

Disinclined to discuss such a delicate subject with 
her, Tilt, somewhat aghast at her statement, stopped 
his inquiries right there, and for a moment or two 
they plodded along together in silence. 

“ Say, Bill,” said Kit, snuggling up a bit closer to 
him, “ you and I have a lot of secrets together, 
haven’t we ? ” 

“ I suppose we have,” he answered. 

“ There’s that message we got from ouija. I 
didn’t tell that to anybody but you. And the mes- 
sage to-night. And there’s nobody but us knows 
about the burglar.” 

“ That’s right.” 

“ Having so many secrets together, we’ll just 
naturally have to trust each other, won’t we ? ” 

“ Look here, young woman,” he warned her, sus- 
picious that she was trying to worm something else 
out of him, “ if you think you are going to get me 
to tell you what’s in the doctor’s will by any such 
tactics, you’re much mistaken.” 

“ You’re entirely wrong,” cried the girl with of- 


A MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER 149 

fended dignity. 44 I don't care a rap what's in the 
old will. You don’t have to tell me if you don't 
want to. I was thinking of something entirely dif- 
ferent." 

“ What, then? ” 

“ You remember that message I was telling you 
about — that message Gertie and I got — with the 
pencil and paper. It said, 4 Find the girl.' ” 

44 What of it? " asked Bill shortly, his mind still 
busy with his own theories of the murder. 

44 1 was just wondering if it meant Conchita. It 
seems awfully strange our finding her the way we 
did, the very night I got the message, doesn't it ? " 

44 Tommyrot." 

44 It isn't tommyrot, and I'll prove it to you yet," 
cried Kit vexedly. 44 1 hate you, Bill Tilt. You're 
always laughing at me." 

With a vicious pinch of his arm, she fled, skipping 
into her home ahead of him and entering by the side 
door, leaving him to follow more leisurely, and — 
to his joy — spend all the rest of the evening with 
Mollie — alone. 


CHAPTER X 

AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 

Tilt found Mollie waiting for him, not in her 
accustomed corner on the porch, but in her mother’s 
den, his arrival thus bringing to him the bitter 
thought that no longer was his presence welcome 
in the hallowed cosy corner. That was now 
Carew’s. 

“ Sorry to be late,” he said stiffly, his manner re- 
flecting his inward resentment of the situation. “ It 
took me longer than I expected to get the papers. 
Here’s the will.” 

“ It doesn’t matter,” said the girl, apparently un- 
observant of his frigidity, as she eagerly took from 
his extended hand the document that gave her a 
fortune. 

As she sat there, reading it line for line, Tilt sat 
cogitating whether or not to tell her of the attempted 
burglary. After all, he reasoned, what was the 
use of worrying her about it ? With her mother and 
Ed both away and Kit to manage, with the recent 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 151 

tragedy still fresh in her mind, why should he add 
to her worries by telling her of the encounter he had 
just had? 

There were other reasons. Inclined to be a little 
vain about his physical strength, Tilt was not at all 
certain that the outcome redounded to his credit. 
In the first place, he felt that it had been decidedly 
careless of him to leave the securities that had been 
entrusted to him as executor wholly unguarded in 
that old-fashioned safe. That they all might have 
been stolen, had he and Kit not arrived at such a 
fortuitous moment, was an appalling thought. In 
the second place, he was vastly vexed with himself 
for having let the burglar escape. The telling of it 
could hardly present him in any other than a ridic- 
ulous light. Even though Mollie now was engaged 
to another man, he hesitated at a recital of facts that 
would give her cause to laugh at him. 

Besides, what could be accomplished by telling 
about the burglary ? Before leaving Rhodes’s house 
he had warned the old housekeeper to hold her 
tongue, and there was little likelihood of the Italian 
girl telling about it. Kit, too, he felt sure, would 
say nothing. Whatever other faults she might 


152 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

have,*Tilt knew she was close-mouthed and not at 
all given to taking the other members of the family 
into her confidence. He recalled that on the way 
home she had spoken of the incident as one of the 
“ secrets” she shared with him. Manifestly she 
had taken it for granted that he did not wish it 
talked about. 

There was another matter that Tilt was thinking 
of as Mollie pored over the will, something that still 
was bothering him very much. Ought he not to 
let Mollie know that her fiance was deceiving her? 
Was it not his duty, the duty of their long-estab- 
lished friendship, to tell her and put her on her 
guard? If Carew were in the habit of lying to her 
and deceiving her now, before their marriage, it 
surely augured ill for her future happiness. Mollie 
was a wonderful girl — too wonderful. Tilt de- 
cided, to be permitted to bestow her affections on a 
man without being certain that he was worthy of 
her trust. 

He must find some way to tell her — to warn 
her — even at the risk of cheapening himself. 

Just then she looked up from the paper she was 
reading with her dark eyes brimming with tears. 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 153 

“ What a dear he was,” she murmured. “ To 
think of his leaving me everything he had. Do you 
know, Bill, I always had the feeling that he cared 
more for me than for any other person on earth.” 

“ It looks that way. I haven’t checked things up 
yet, but he must have had over a million.” 

“ It isn’t the money I care about. It’s the thought 
of it — that he wanted me to have it.” 

“There are two things, though, about that will 
that puzzle me,” said Tilt. “ I can’t understand 
why he should have made me the executor; and 
there’s another funny thing — did you notice the 
date?” 

“ What about it ? ” said Mollie, consulting the 
paper to see when it was dated. 

“ That will was drawn the very day after your 
engagement to Carew was announced.” 

“ That certainly is peculiar — very peculiar,” said 
Mollie thoughtfully. “ I can’t understand that. 
Do you know, Bill, I’m going to tell you something 
I have never breathed to a soul. Doctor Rhodes 
didn’t like Paul Carew. I learned of it when I told 
him of our engagement.” 

“ What did he say? ” 


154 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ That was the strange part of it. He didn’t say 
a word but just stood looking at me in a sorrowful 
way. It looked to me as if the news had been a 
great shock to him. ‘ Aren’t you going to wish me 
happiness?' I asked him. ‘Would that I could,' 
he answered, and then he turned and walked away 
and never spoke to me again about it. There was 
only one way that I could account for it. I felt 
that he must have loved me very dearly himself, and 
the idea of my marrying any one else was almost too 
much for him." 

“ Maybe it wasn't that. Perhaps he didn’t trust 
Carew." 

“ Why ? What do you mean ? " cried Mollie, 
bridling at once. 

“ Have you always found him trustworthy ? " 

“ Why, of course I have. What a silly question. 
Paul Carew is the soul of honor." 

“ He told you last night, didn't he," said Tilt, not 
without a vicious feeling of joy, “ that he was going 
on the midnight train to Boston ? " 

“ Yes. What of it?" 

“ What would you think if I told you that he did 
not go — that not ten minutes after I had left you 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 155 

this morning I saw him riding up Sixth Avenue in 
a taxicab — with a woman? ” 

“ I’d say,” cried Mollie proudly, “ that either you 
were entirely mistaken, or else that you were lying 
deliberately — trying to make trouble between Paul 
and me.” 

“ I am not lying,” said Tilt tensely, casting cau- 
tion to the winds. “ I did see him. I know the 
woman he was with.” 

The angry red that colored the girl's cheeks 
should have warned him on what dangerous ground 
he was treading, but he blundered on: 

“ Mollie, you know how much I always have 
thought of you. You know I wouldn’t tell you this 
sort of thing if I didn’t feel that you ought to be 
warned. It isn’t as if you had known Carew all 
your life, as you have me. He’s a comparative 
newcomer here. Nobody knows much about him, 
in fact, except that he has been coming out here for 
a couple of summers.” 

“ Stop ! ” cried the girl wrath fully, rising and con- 
fronting him. “ How dare you come here to my 
house to tell me those lies about Paul ? ” 

“ It is because I love you,” cried Tilt, in despera- 


1 56 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

tion. “ I tell you I love you. If Carew hadn’t 
come along, I was going to ask you to marry me.” 

“ You — love — me — YOU ! ” 

She burst into mocking laughter. 

“ You love me. You were going to ask me to 
marry you. Why, Bill Tilt, I wouldn’t marry you 
if you were the last man on earth, you great, big, 
clumsy lummax. The very idea, just because I’ve 
been nice to you on the family’s account and let you 
play tennis with me once in a while — to think that 
you had the presumption to imagine I ever could 
care for you.” 

“ But,” mumbled abashed Bill in confusion, " you 
used to like me.” 

“ As a pal, perhaps, but that is no reason why you 
should try to trespass and come here endeavoring 
to poison my mind against my future husband.” 
Her voice was cold, hard, merciless. Into her eyes 
had come a look of anger, of hate almost insane in 
its intensity. 

But just then quick steps on the porch reached 
the ears of both, and the conflict between them was 
suspended, as they turned to see who it was. 
Breathlessly Carew entered the room. 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 1 57 

“ Oh, Paul,” cried Mollie, greeting him with out- 
stretched arms, “ I’m so glad you’ve come. Bill 
Tilt has been trying to make me believe dreadful 
things about you.” 

“What’s this?” cried Carew, giving a nervous 
start. “ What things ? ” 

“ I merely told her,” Tilt hastened to explain, 
“ certain things that I know to be facts. I told her 
that you had not gone to Boston. That I myself 
had seen you this morning riding up Sixth Avenue 
in a taxicab.” 

Carew, it seemed to Tilt, wavered for just a 
moment before replying, and then, turning toward 
Mollie, he said with studied calmness: 

“ What he says is perfectly true. I did not go to 
Boston last night. When I got back to my rooms, 
I found a letter there which made the trip unneces- 
sary. That’s the reason I came over to-night, to 
explain it to you. And it is also perfectly true that 
I rode up Sixth Avenue in a taxicab this morning. 
Tilt may have seen me, although I didn’t see 
him.” 

“ But, Paul,” cried Mollie, the angry glare coming 
once more into her eyes, “ he said there was a woman 


158 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

in the taxicab. You weren't with a woman, were 
you? ” 

“ It seems to me,” said Carew stiffly, “ that Mr. 
Tilt has been concerning himself a great deal with 
affairs that are none of his business.” 

“ But,” persisted Mollie, her voice rising shrilly, 
“ he said you had a woman in the cab. He said he 
knew who the woman was.” 

At this statement, it seemed to Tilt that Carew’s 
face suddenly paled. At any rate, he gave a violent 
start. 

“ That also is true,” he stammered. “ I was with 
Miss Addison, Rose Addison, whom Doctor Rhodes 
employed as his office attendant.” 

“ Perhaps,” interjected Tilt maliciously, “ you can 
also explain why you gave Miss Addison a false 
name, why you told her that you were Mr. Ray- 
mond — Mr. Raymond from the Trust Com- 
pany.” 

Tilt, turning to watch the effect of this shot on 
Mollie, read in her face the first sign of doubt that 
he had seen there. With pitiful anxiety she leaned 
forward to hear Paul's words. Tilt felt that now 
he was about to be vindicated, and that his last 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 159 

question would be no easy matter for Carew to clear 
up, but he counted his triumph too soon. 

“ While I must protest against this interference 
of Mr. Tilt in my affairs,” said Carew, giving his 
rival a glance of hatred, “ it is all easily explained. 
Knowing how interested Mollie was in trying to 
solve the mystery of Doctor Rhodes’s death, I have 
undertaken an investigation of it. Naturally one of 
the persons likely to have valuable information about 
the doctor’s private affairs was the nurse who was in 
his office every day. I located her, and as a ruse to 
try to get her confidence, I told her that I was Mr. 
Raymond from the Trust Company.” 

He turned apologetically to Mollie. 

“ I have told you nothing of this, dearest, because 
I wanted to clear the whole thing up and surprise 
you. I knew how much it was worrying you.” 

“ There,” cried Mollie vindictively, " I told you 
Paul was perfectly trustworthy. Even you, Bill 
Tilt, with your evil mind, must admit that he has 
explained everything satisfactorily.” 

“ Yes,” admitted Bill, not at all enthusiastically, 
“ he has explained it.” 

“And,” cried Mollie, her voice rising once more 


160 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


in anger, “ I want you to get out of my home, Bill 
Tilt, and never, never, while I am in it, do you dare 
to come here. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” 

Weeping passionately, she flung herself into her 
fiance’s arms, as Tilt stood looking helplessly on. 

“ You heard what she said,” cried Carew vin- 
dictively, over Mollie’s shoulder. “ Will you go at 
once — or shall I be compelled to put you out ? ” 

“ I’ll go,” stammered Bill. 

Feeling as if his feet had been pulled out from 
beneath him, as if he had been barred from Para- 
dise, Tilt, grabbing up his hat, fled from the house, 
and with angry, rapid strides sought the deserted 
porch of the little clubhouse and flung himself down 
on a bench overlooking the water, cursing himself 
for a silly fool. 

It was not that Carew had so successfully refuted 
the doubts that he had endeavored to stir in Mollie’s 
mind. His opinion about Carew remained un- 
changed. Although his glib explanation had seemed 
logical enough, Tilt still distrusted him. Nor did 
the fact that the Manners home was henceforth 
barred to him give him much worry. A greater 
trouble — a greater grief than that — was his. In 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 161 


Mollie, his friend, his pal, his ideal, in Mollie, the 
girl whom he had been so confident that he loved, 
in that moment of anger had been revealed to him 
in her eyes, her voice, her manner, an evil, uncon- 
trollable, murderous temper that he never dreamed 
she had possessed. Never again, he told himself 
sadly, could he look upon her with the same feeling. 
.The mantle of sanctity, of sweetness, of perpetual 
charm somehow had been stripped from her. Al- 
ways, always, no matter what their future relations 
might be, he would remember and know that some- 
where deep within her lay a stratum of evil, of 
hate. 

It came over him that he was wretchedly alone, 
that there was no one for whom he cared, or who 
cared for him. He was nothing but a blundering 
fool. He was just what Mollie had called him, “ a 
great big clumsy lummax,” always doing things the 
wrong way, always putting his foot in it. Rhodes 
at least had trusted him and had made him his 
executor. Surely that was a proof of friendship, 
but now Rhodes was dead — murdered. 

In an unwonted mood of self-analysis, he sat 
there alone on the porch of the deserted clubhouse, 


162 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


feeling strangely depressed and abased. He had 
considered Ed Manners a friend, yet at the inquest 
it was Ed who had tried to throw on him the sus- 
picion of having destroyed or secreted the note that 
Rhodes had been writing. He had looked on Mrs. 
Manners with almost the same affection as upon his 
own mother, yet when he had asked her a simple 
question about Rhodes’s marriage, she had acted 
most peculiarly and had refused him her confidence. 
And Mollie — almost as far back as he could re- 
member, he and Mollie had been the best of pals, 
yet when he had tried to do her a friendly act, she 
had turned venomously on him. 

Was he a failure in life? What was there about 
him that was at fault; what failing in character or 
personality, he wondered, made them hold his friend- 
ship so lightly? As morosely he meditated over 
what had happened, he felt a light touch on his 
sleeve, and turning with a start, discovered in the 
moonlight a slender figure beside him, — the Ter- 
rible Kit. 

“Oh, Bill,” she whispered sympathetically, “wasn’t 
it rotten — perfectly rotten, the way they talked to 
you? ” 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 163 

“ Where were you ? ” he demanded suspiciously, 
at the same time conscious of an unusual feeling of 
warmth toward her. 

“At the head of the stairs — listening,” she an- 
swered unshamedly. 

“ A nice, ladylike thing to do,” he rebuked 
her. 

“ Pooh ! ” scoffed Kit, “ manners don’t count 
when you are trying to solve a mystery. I wanted 
to find out what was in Doctor Rhodes’s will and 
why you brought it over to show to Mollie. I saw 
you when you picked it out from the other papers 
and slipped it into your pocket.” 

“ Humph ! ” snapped Tilt. “And you heard 
everything that was said, I suppose.” 

“ Not quite everything,” said Kit regretfully, 
“ though I came down a few steps when things got 
hot. I wish I could have seen Paul Carew’s face 
when he was talking. I wanted to see if he was 
lying.” 

“ Oh, bosh,” said Tilt, trying to be fair, “ I guess 
I went off half-cocked. The explanations he gave 
sounded all right.” 

“ Too much all right,” commented Kit. 


164 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Well, anyhow,” said Tilt, “ I put my foot in it. 
Mollie has forbidden me the house.” 

“ Don't you care. It’s as much my house as it 
is hers. You can come to see me.” 

“ I’m not apt to come where I’m not wanted.” 

“ Well, Mother'll want you when she gets home, 
and it’s her house,” Kit persisted. 

“Have you heard from your mother? When’s 
she coming home?” Tilt asked, seeking to change 
the subject. 

“ She’ll be home to-morrow. There was a tele- 
gram from her to-day.” 

“Well, in that case,” suggested Tilt, “you’d 
better be getting home and getting your beauty 
sleep, so that when she sees you, she won’t think 
that you’ve been up to any mischief. Come on, I’ll 
walk as far as the porch with you.” 

“ I’m often up later than this,” Kit protested, 
nevertheless, in an acquiescent mood entirely foreign 
to her ordinary conduct, making no further argu- 
ment about it. Clinging to his arm she strolled back 
with him, saying nothing more until they were near- 
ing the house. Then she burst out with : 

“ Say, Bill, did it strike you as funny that when 


AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT 165 

Paul Carew arrived at the house he was all 
out of breath. He acted as if he had been run- 
ning.” 

“ Now that you speak of it, he was out of breath.” 

“ I wish I knew why he'd been running,” said 
Kit meditatively. 

Tilt did not answer her. He was too busy 
puzzling over the many mysterious aspects of the 
case. For one thing, he was determined to see Mrs. 
Manners as soon as she had reached home. Surely 
she would be willing to tell him the secret of Doctor 
Rhodes's past when she heard that all his fortune 
had been left to Mollie and that Tilt was the 
executor. 

“ I came out the side door,” whispered Kit, as 
they approached the house, steering her escort to- 
ward the side of the house by a path that led al- 
most directly to the dining room and den. As they 
were within sight of the windows of the den, they 
both stopped suddenly and looked ahead in amaze- 
ment. 

Silhouetted against the window of the room where 
Mollie and Carew still sat talking was a head, — a 
woman's head. 


166 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ It's that girl again — it's Conchita," cried Kit 
in surprise. 

At the sound of Kit's voice, the figure at the 
window turned with a start and fled noiselessly 
across the grass, leaving Tilt and Kit standing there 
dumbfounded, gazing blankly after her. 

“ Bill," breathed Kit excitedly, “ I've just got to 
get my ouija board out again and ask about her. 
That girl knows something. I wonder what it 
can be ? ” 

“ I wonder," said Tilt, as he bade Kit good night 
and strode off toward home. 


CHAPTER XI 

A THEORY SHATTERED 

Although the first thing that Tilt did the next 
day was to hurry into the city with the securities of 
which he had been made custodian and place them 
in a safe-deposit box, his action brought him neither 
a sense of security nor of relief. Each day's de- 
velopments added to his conviction that the same 
evil mind that had contrived Rhodes’s death still 
must be in some way plotting against the safety of 
those who had been most closely associated with 
Rhodes, — the Manners family and himself. In no 
other way could he account for the sequence of 
strange happenings. 

His quarrel with Mollie, too, hung over him like 
a black cloud. As he reviewed the incident with 
the clearer vision of the morning after, he found 
himself almost inclined to justify her actions. If 
she really loved Carew, she could hardly have done 
otherwise. It was stupid of him, without having 


168 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


verified his suspicions, to have blurted them out to 
Carew’s fiancee. Well-intentioned though his mo- 
tives had been, he certainly had made an egregious 
ass of himself. No wonder they both were furious 
at him. 

It seemed to him, too, that with each day the mys- 
tery surrounding Rhodes’s death was getting into 
a more hopeless muddle, and that as time advanced 
there was less likelihood of its ever being cleared 
up. The county authorities, when their case against 
Pincus had collapsed, apparently had abandoned the 
search for the murderer, and the activities of 
Smithers he was inclined to disregard as entirely 
futile. Devan was still unexplainedly absent. 
Probably he was off following something that he 
regarded as a clue, but as to where he was or what 
he might be doing, Tilt had not the faintest idea. 

What possible relation the little Italian girl could 
have to the mystery was another poser to Tilt, yet 
he felt certain that in some way she must be in- 
volved. Why else would she have been watching at 
Rhodes’s house, and why was she peering in at the 
Manners’ windows? Her plausible story the night 
before, coupled as it was with Kit’s identification of 


A THEORY SHATTERED 169 

her and Mrs. Grady’s statement that she was a fre- 
quent visitor, had for the time allayed his sus- 
picions, yet his discovery of her spying two hours 
later on Mollie and Carew had instantly revived his 
worst thoughts about her. He was confident now 
that she had been the burglar’s confederate and that 
she purposely had tripped him in order to enable the 
burglar to escape. 

But who was the burglar? 

The fact of the girl’s nationality suggested that 
the man whom he had seen attempting to open the 
safe might have been an Italian, too. There were 
a number of Italian families in the village. It might 
be that some one, Dixon or Pressly Hart, had gos- 
sipped about the doctor’s wealth and had inspired 
the attempt at robbery, yet it seemed more logical to 
assume that the murder and burglary were links in 
the same chain. Recalling Devan’s description of 
his method of work, Tilt began trying to fit all the 
facts that were known to him into a picture. 

Even if there had been a woman at the bottom of 
it, everything seemed to point to a man as the 
central figure in the picture. 

A man, according to Miss Addison’s statements. 


170 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

had come several times with secrecy to Doctor 
Rhodes’s office, and they had heated arguments 
there. 

A man had telephoned to the doctor’s house, and 
Rhodes had gone in the early morning, presumably 
to meet him. 

A man had shot him there ; a woman would never 
have used a rifle. 

A man had tried to rob the doctor’s safe, per- 
haps with the intention of stealing the bonds, per- 
haps in an effort to recover some document he be- 
lieved to be locked up there. 

Who was this man? That was the question Tilt 
kept vainly asking himself. What could have been 
his motive, — a motive sufficiently strong to cause 
him to commit a cold-blooded, deliberate murder, 
to attempt a daring robbery? 

Was he some Italian, as Conchita’s appearance in 
the case naturally suggested? To Tilt’s way of 
thinking this did not seem probable. He could con- 
ceive of no reason that would induce Rhodes to go 
to the club at one in the morning to meet an Italian 
from the village. W'ho, then, could it have been? 
Was it, as both Devan and Smithers had suggested, 


A THEORY SHATTERED 171 

some one who knew Rhodes well, was familiar with 
his habits, possibly some member of the club? 

Mentally Tilt ran through the list of members. 
He knew them all. There was not a single one of 
them, so far as he knew, who had not been on the 
best of terms with Rhodes. All of the members 
were respectable, peaceable family men. 

Where, then, was the murderer to be found? 
The more Tilt thought about it, the more strongly 
convinced he became that the clue to the man’s iden- 
tity would be found in Rhodes’s mysterious past. 
Rhodes had been married years ago and had gone 
to the Philippines and had been reported killed there. 
He had returned and had found his wife married to 
another. So much Mollie had told him, — undoubt- 
edly all she knew about it. And there had been a 
child! 

All day long, as he mechanically fulfilled his 
duties, he kept pondering on this tragedy in Rhodes’s 
early life, trying to link it up with his untimely 
end, but it was not until he was walking home from 
the station in the evening that a great light dawned 
on him. 

There had been a child ! 


172 tragedy at the beach club 

That child, Walter Rhodes’s child, must be a 
grown man by now. His mother discredited and 
separated from the father, what would be more 
natural than that the son should grow up hating his 
father. There was no mention of this child in his, 
will. Was it not more than probable that the son, 
arriving at maturity and learning of his father’s 
prominence and of his wealth, should demand a 
share of it? It might have been he who had visited 
Rhodes in his office with such secrecy. Suppose, 
reasoned Tilt, this son, having learned that he was 
to be disinherited, after a final plea for recognition, 
in a rage had shot his father. Naturally the next 
step would be to destroy the will. 

At last Tilt was satisfied that he had a theory 
that would account both for the murder and for the 
burglary. But did it account for Conchita? It 
seemed not impossible that the son, secretly spying 
on his father, might have learned that Conchita 
visited the doctor’s house and might have beguiled 
her into playing the spy for him. Confident that he 
at last was on the right track, Tilt hurried on home- 
ward. He must get in touch as soon as possible 
with the two persons who would know about this 


A THEORY SHATTERED 


173 

child. If Mrs. Manners were not home yet, he 
would see old Hodder and make him talk, but as 
he entered his home the telephone was ringing. It 
was Mrs. Manners. 

“ Is that you, Bill ? ” she said. “ Can I come over 
to see you ? There are things — important things — 
I must tell you.” 

“ I’ll wait for you,” he answered, though in his 
voice there was a shade of disappointment. Or- 
dinarily, Mrs. Manners, wishing to see him, would 
have asked him to go to her house. Mollie must 
already have told her of their quarrel, and appar- 
ently he still was on her black books. All day long 
he had been hoping against hope that the girl, her 
temper over, would be ready to forgive him, but 
seemingly she hadn’t. 

Presently Mrs. Manners appeared, looking tired 
and worn. She carried a small traveling bag, from 
which, as she sat down, she drew forth a packet of 
papers. 

“You remember, Bill,” she said, “how startled 
I was when you asked me about Walter Rhodes’s 
wife. I could not conceive how you could know 
about her.” 


i 7 4 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ It was in the will,” Tilt began. 

“ Yes, I know that now,” she interrupted. 
“ Mollie told me about the will and told me that he 
had made you his executor, but of course I didn’t 
know that then, and the mention of her brought a 
dread possibility to my mind. I had not thought 
before that it might have been her — that sh£ might 
have escaped ” 

“ Escaped,” echoed Tilt amazedly. 

“ Yes,” explained Mrs. Manners, “ Walter 
Rhodes’s wife for years has been in a private sani- 
tarium near Boston, hopelessly insane — with homi- 
cidal mania. It’s the saddest story you ever heard.” 

“ Tell me about it,” cried Tilt excitedly, feeling 
sure now that Mrs. Manners’ revelations would 
support the theory he had formed of the murder. 

“ Walter Rhodes and my husband,” she began, 
“ first met at the Naval Academy when they were 
cadets and became the closest of friends. My hus- 
band left the service soon after graduating to earn 
a salary that would enable him to marry, but Walter 
stayed and became a lieutenant commander. Some- 
where down in the West Indies, during the Spanish 
War, he met a beautiful, auburn-haired Irish girl 


A THEORY SHATTERED 


»75 

who had been left stranded there by the death of 
her parents. He fell violently in love with her, 
courted her for a week and married her, sending 
her north to us until the war was over. When he 
returned from Cuba, he was assigned to the Boston 
Navy Yard, and taking her there with him, he 
established her in a cottage in the suburbs of Boston. 
They were hardly settled before he was ordered to 
the Philippines. We went on to Boston and urged 
her to come and make her home with us until his 
return, but she decided to remain in the cottage. 

“ Two months later there came a report that 
Walter had been killed in a skirmish with the na- 
tives and that his body had not been recovered. 
Three days later his wife gave birth to a child. 

“ For a few months I kept track of her, but 
gradually our correspondence waned and died. Fif- 
teen months later word came from the Philippines 
that Walter was alive. He had been wounded and 
captured. A blow on his head had injured his brain, 
and for months he had lived in a native village, not 
knowing his own identity. When the village was 
finally captured, his presence was discovered, and he 
was removed to the hospital at Manila. There was 


176 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

an operation to remove the bone that was pressing 
on his brain, and his reason was restored. 

“ Meanwhile his wife had disappeared. My hus- 
band, on hearing that Walter was alive, made sev- 
eral trips to Boston to try to locate her but without 
success. We employed detectives but could find no 
trace of her. She had sold off everything in the 
cottage and had vanished with the child. As soon 
as Walter was able to travel, he came home under 
the care of a boatswain’s mate, Malachi Hodder, 
whose enlistment had just expired — that’s old 
Malachi, who looks after the boats.” 

“ Yes, I know,” said Tilt. “At the inquest he 
spoke of Rhodes as ‘ the Commander.’ ” 

* f 

“ Walter, taking Hodder with him, spent weeks 
and weeks traveling about, trying to find his wife. 
At last he located her and found her married to an- 
other man. There was a dreadful scene. She was 
the type of woman who seems to inspire violent 
passion in men. Her new husband loved her 
madly, and learning that their marriage was ille- 
gal, killed himself. She became a raving maniac 
and tried to kill Walter. Old Hodder saved his 
life. 


A THEORY SHATTERED 177 

“ Probably there was insanity in her blood. We 
never knew. Even Walter had learned little of her 
history or parentage, but from that day to this she 
has been hopelessly insane. An uncle of Walter’s, 
dying about this time, left him a fortune, and he 
put it all in trust for her, arranging through a trust 
company in Boston that she should have the best of 
care in a private sanitarium run by a Mrs. Sophie 
Karuski, just outside Boston. Ever since she has 
had every comfort that money could provide, special 
nurses of her own day and night and the best 
medical attention, though Walter, I believe, never 
saw her again after she attempted his life. 

“ He resigned from the navy and in an effort to 
forget his troubles took up the study of medicine 
and quickly made a reputation as a skilful surgeon. 
I do not think through all these years he ceased to 
love her. He seemed to find some comfort in re- 
lieving the sufferings of others, having himself suf- 
fered so deeply. Although I doubt if he ever knew 
happiness, after he had come out here to Rockmont 
to be near us, he seemed more content. It all hap- 
pened long ago, and as he never spoke of her even 
to us, I had almost forgotten her existence until your 


178 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

question the other evening suggested the possibility 
of her having been the murderer. 

“ After you had gone, I lay awake all night. 
There seemed to be only one way that I could satisfy 
myself that it was not she who had done it. Early 
the next morning I talked with old Hodder, and we 
decided that the best thing for me to do was to go 
to the sanitarium and make certain that she had not 
escaped. When I saw her, I knew there was no 
possibility of her having done it. Even if Mrs. 
Karuski had not assured me that she had never been 
outside the sanitarium walls, her physical condition 
is such as to make it out of the question. She is 
very feeble, and for months she has not left her bed, 
but lies there day and night, moaning incoherently. 

“ While I was there, the question came to my 
mind whether the doctor's death would require any 
new arrangements with the trust company, and I 
sent for Ed to come up. Since my husband’s death, 
he is the only one who knows anything of the 
matter. And now, tell me, what have they dis- 
covered? Have they arrested any one yet for the 
murder? ” 

“ Not yet,” said Tilt, “ but there will be an arrest 


A THEORY SHATTERED 


1 79 

shortly. I know who killed Rhodes. I have a 
theory of the crime. I know who did it.” 

“You know,” cried Mrs. Manners. “Who was 
it?” 

“ I know Tm right,” said Tilt with conviction. 
“ Your story has made it perfectly obvious. It 
establishes the motive.” 

“ My story — the motive — I don't understand.” 

“ Certainly. You said there was a child, didn't 
you? That child is grown up by now. It is per- 
fectly obvious that it must have been Rhodes's own 
child that killed him.” 

“ No, no! My God, don't say that,” Mrs. Man- 
ners fairly shrieked at him, rising and facing him 
with an agonized face. “Oh, my God, no! No! 
Not that!” 

“ I have thought it all out,” Tilt persisted, though 
vastly amazed at her vehement manner. “ It is per- 
fectly obvious. It couldn't have been any one else.” 

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what 
you're saying,” cried Mrs. Manners, sinking back 
into her chair and covering her face with her hands, 
as if to shut out the thought that Tilt had sug- 
gested. 


i8o TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ Let me explain,” he began. 

“Don’t,” she cried hysterically. “You can’t! 
You mustn’t. It’s too terrible. It couldn’t be.” 

“ But it was, I tell you,” he insisted doggedly. 

“ Mollie wouldn’t have done it. She couldn’t 
have.” 

“ Mollie ! ” he exclaimed in bewilderment. “ Mol- 
lie — what are you talking about ? ” 

“ Oh, I never meant you to know. We promised 
we’d never tell any one. Mollie — our Mollie — is 
Doctor Rhodes’s child. We adopted her.” 

“ Mollie ! ” cried Tilt, in utter amazement. “ I 
took it for granted the child was a son.” 

“No, no; it was a daughter. It was Mollie. 
She never did it.” 

“Of course not,” said Tilt, feeling now more at 
sea than ever, as he saw his theory of the murder 
rudely shattered. 

“ It was a man who killed Rhodes. I’m sorry, 
Mrs. Manners. I didn’t know. I hadn’t the slight- 
est idea that Mollie wasn’t your own daughter.” 

“ Of course, you couldn’t have had. We took her 
when she was hardly two years old. Walter didn’t 
want her ever to know about her mother. He said 


A THEORY SHATTERED i8i 


that where there was a tendency to insanity, the 
knowledge of a parent’s insanity had a most baleful 
influence. My husband, who had grown fond of 
her, suggested that the best way of keeping the 
knowledge of the mother’s fate from her was for 
us to adopt her, and Walter assented. We had just 
come to the city then and had few acquaintances, 
so no one knew the difference. No one knows it 
but Ed and myself and old Hodder — and you.” 

“And I shall never tell it — never,” said Tilt, 
thinking now of his recent quarrel with Mollie not 
with anger but with regret, as he recalled the almost 
maniacal expression that had come into her eyes 
as she had denounced him. 

Poor, poor Mollie! What a dread inheritance 
was hers ! 


CHAPTER XII 

MISSING — A MOTIVE 

Pressly Hart came fussily up on to the Tilt 
porch, where Bill lay sprawled in Sunday morning 
comfort behind a disorderly heap of newspapers. 
John Dixon was with him. 

“ Look here, Tilt,” he began, “ something’s got 
to be done.” 

Ordinarily on any pleasant summer Sunday, Tilt, 
like most of the other members of the colony, would 
have been found over at the club, but the pall of the 
recent tragedy still hung heavily over the little club- 
house, leaving it practically deserted, even on the 
days of rest. Both the courts and the piazza now 
were generally without occupants. Even the bridge 
players seemed to shun it, and were holding their 
nightly games at each other’s houses. As a result, 
there had been fewer opportunities for conversation 
between the residents, and this was the first time that 
Tilt had seen either Hart or Dixon since Mrs. Man- 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 183 

ners had made the astounding revelation to him 
about Mollie's parentage. 

He felt instinctively, as he saw them coming up 
the walk, that they could have come but for one 
purpose — to discuss the mystery — and he did not 
wish to talk about it, at least not with them. It 
seemed to him that each time he discussed it or that 
there was any new development, it only left things in 
a more amazing, unfathomable tangle. 

“ Something's got to be done," repeated Hart. 
“ Here it's days and days since poor Rhodes was 
done away with, and nobody has the slightest idea 
yet who murdered him. Nobody's been arrested 
yet. Even that star investigator I hired — that 
friend of yours — has gone off God knows where, 
and nobody knows what he's doing. Do you know 
where Devan is ? " 

“ I don't," said Tilt “ He 'phoned me several 
days ago that he was going to Boston, but whether 
or not he is still there I cannot say. I haven't heard 
from him since." 

“ Have you any idea what he went up there for? " 

“ He didn't tell me," said Tilt, although he might 
have added that he had his suspicions. 


184 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“Anyhow,” said Hart, his manner becoming more 
assertive, “ I don’t like the way things are going. 
As long as this mystery is unsolved, our club is un- 
der a sort of a cloud. And what’s more, I think 
the Manners family have been acting most pecul- 
iarly.” 

“ What do you mean? ” asked Tilt anxiously. 
Even if he and Mollie were no longer friends and 
he had been forbidden the house, he was determined 
that the family should not be gossiped about if it 
were in his power to prevent it. 

“ It was Dixon here who first called my atten- 
tion to it. You tell him, Dixon, what you told 
me. 

“ Everybody knows,” explained Dixon, “ that the 
Manners family and Doctor Rhodes were very good 
friends. They were the closest friends he had in 
the colony. The three of us here know that Rhodes 
left all his money to Mollie Manners. I merely said 
to Hart that under the circumstances it was damned 
queer Mrs. Manners didn’t attend the funeral. Only 
the two girls and Ed were there.” 

“ Mrs. Manners was away,” Tilt put in promptly. 

“Yes, but why did she go away just then? 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 185 

Where’ d she go? Ed Manners went away, too, 
right afterward. He’s still away.” 

“That’s it,” cried Pressly Hart excitedly. “That’s 
it. Ed Manners’ conduct certainly ought to be 
looked into. Just between ourselves, I believe he 
knows who did it, if he didn’t do it himself. His 
mother knows about it. That’s why she has hidden 
him away somewhere.” 

“ Oh, bosh, Hart,” cried Tilt. “ You’re letting 
your imagination run away with you. Ed Manners 
is no murderer. It’s absurd.” 

“ Hold on,” said Dixon. “ He has acted 
strangely about the case. You can’t have forgotten 
how at the inquest he tried to throw suspicion on 
you. He certainly did his best to make people be- 
lieve it was you who had taken and secreted that 
message the doctor was writing when he was 
shot. What was his purpose in doing that? I’m 
free to say that I suspected him right from the 
start.” 

“ It was not he who took that slip of paper,” Tilt 
insisted. “ I’m positive of it.” 

He spoke with such conviction that both of his 
callers turned to regard him suspiciously, wonder- 


86 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


in g if there was anything he knew which they did 
not. 

“ Who took it, if he didn’t? ” asked Dixon. 

“ You know? ” challenged Hart. 

“ I don’t know who took it. I know I didn’t. 
I’m equally positive that Ed didn’t. He couldn’t 
have.” 

Tilt was sorry now that he had said as much as 
he had, but he could not help wondering what they 
would say and think if they knew that right at this 
very minute he had the slip of paper they were talk- 
ing about in his wallet, in the envelope in which 
Mollie had received it. He had kept it, exactly as 
she had handed it to him on the train, for the pur- 
pose of showing it to Devan. 

Pressly Hart sat picking nervously at a leaf on 
one of the porch vines and then burst out: 

“ There’s only one way I see to bring the thing 
into the open. Tilt, as executor, you must file your 
papers at once and make the will public. You must 
let people know that the Manners family are hooked 
up in it.” 

“ What good would that do ? ” objected Tilt. “ It 
would only start up a lot of talk.” 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 187 

“ The more talk there is, the more likelihood of 
our finding out something." 

“Have you told Mollie Manners yet?" asked 
Dixon. 

“ Oh, yes, she knows, and her mother, too." 

“ Well, Tilt," announced Hart, in his most of- 
ficious and offensive manner, “ all I’ve got to say is 
that you've got to make that will public right 
away — to-morrow — or else I will. This secrecy 
is getting us nowhere." 

“ Devan wanted it withheld for the present." 

“Yes, but where’s Devan? He’s disappeared. 
For all we know, the murderer may have bought 
him off. Ed Manners went to Boston, and then 
Devan. Maybe they've fixed things up together. 
I’m sorry now that I ever hired Devan. I don't 
like the way he has acted. He ought to have taken 
us into his confidence right from the start. The 
news about the Rhodes fortune is bound to come out 
some day. I'm going to see that everybody hears 
about that will at once." 

“ Very well,” said Tilt quietly. “ Since you wish 
it, I will file the papers to-morrow." 

He realized that if Pressly Hart had made up his 


188 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

mind to spread the news, there was little use in try- 
ing to stop him. The burden of keeping the secret 
was already weighing too heavily upon him. A 
small-minded man, delighting in petty glories, Hart 
was eager to shine among his neighbors as he re- 
lated the story of what they had found in the 
Rhodes safe. 

Tilt had another reason for agreeing so readily 
to the proposal. At any minute he was expecting 
Rose Addison to arrive, and he wished to be rid of 
his callers before she came. For several days he 
had been trying to get into communication with her, 
but it appeared that, left without an occupation by 
the death of Rhodes, she had gone back to private 
nursing. When he had called up her apartment, all 
that he had been able to learn was that she was “ out 
on a case.” Hoping a letter might be forwarded, 
he had written to her, and only the evening before 
had come a wire from her saying that she would be 
out to see him Sunday morning. 

To his annoyance, both Hart and Dixon lingered, 
discussing the mystery in all its aspects, both of them 
apparently intent on assembling all the known facts 
and many more conjectures of their own in such a 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 189 

way as to cast suspicion at Ed Manners’ door. As 
Bill sat there, irritably listening and taking little 
part in the conversation, he could not help wonder- 
ing what the effect would be on their opinions if 
they knew what he knew: 

That the missing message had been mailed to 
Mollie and was now in his pocket. 

That Mollie wasn’t Mollie Manners at all but 
Rhodes’s own daughter. 

That Mollie’s mother and old Hodder knew the 
secret of Rhodes’s past. 

That Mollie’s fiance, under an assumed name, had 
been trying to pump the doctor’s office assistant. 

That an attempt had been made to rob the doctor’s 
safe. 

That an Italian girl, a village drab, had been 
mixed up in the burglary and had also been spying 
on the Manners home. 

As he reviewed his own knowledge of the matter, 
he was glad that he had kept it to himself. While 
he was positive that none of the Manners family 
could have had any part in the murder, he was com- 
pelled to admit that others — Pressly Hart, for ex- 
ample — would instantly accept all this as evidence 


190 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

pointing to Ed as the guilty person. Although, as 
time after time he assembled these strange circum- 
stances and tried to interpret them, the mystery 
seemed only to grow deeper and more confusing, 
Tilt had made up his mind to tell the whole story 
to only one person — * Richard Devan, even though 
Devan’s unexplained absence was as perplexing and 
annoying to him as it was to Hart. 

At last, to his relief, his callers rose to go. 

“ It’s agreed then,” said Hart, “ that you’ll file 
the papers and make the will public to-morrow.” 

“ Certainly I’ll do it, since you and Mr. Dixon 
advise it,” Tilt hastily agreed, eager to obviate any 
further argument. He watched them with relief as 
they left the porch and vanished around the corner 
not five minutes before Miss Addison arrived. 

“ I’m sorry,” she apologized ; “ I couldn’t get here 
any sooner. I didn’t get your note until last night. 
You know how it is in my profession. When we 
get a case, our time is seldom our own. Have you 
found the murderer ? ” 

“ No,” said Tilt, “ we are still as much in the 
dark as ever, and Devan, who is making the in- 
vestigation, is away, but there is something I wished 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 


191 

to ask you — something important — most im- 
portant.” 

“ What is it ? Anything I know I’ll be only too 
glad to tell if it will help discover who killed Doctor 
Rhodes.” 

“ What do you know about Paul Carew? ” 

He purposely shot the question at her, hoping to 
catch her off her guard and, if she were trying to 
conceal anything from him, to read it in her face, 
but her expression showed only blank astonish- 
ment. 

“ Paul Carew,” she repeated. “ That’s the man 
you asked me about over the ’phone. I don’t know 
any such person.” 

“Are you sure ? ” 

She looked at him blankly, as she stood apparently 
trying to ransack the shelves of her memory. 

“ The name means nothing to me whatever.” 

“ Yet,” said Tilt, still watching her face closely, 
“you were talking to him last Monday — I saw 
you.” 

“ You couldn’t have,” she protested. “ I tell you 
I don’t know any Paul Carew. I never heard of 
him.” 


1Q2 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ I saw you riding up Sixth Avenue with him in 
a taxicab.” 

“ That wasn't Paul Carew,” she exclaimed in 
astonishment. “ I told you that was a man from 
the Trust Company where Doctor Rhodes had an 
account.” 

“Are you positive ? ” 

“ Why, of course. At least, when he looked me 
up and said he was from the Trust Company, I took 
his word for it.” 

“ Did he give you his card ? ” 

“ No. He called me on the 'phone first and made 
an appointment to meet me. He said he was 

Mr. ” she hesitated for a moment, as if trying 

to recall the name — “Mr. Raymond of the Trust 
Company.” 

“ What did he want with you ? ” 

“ He explained that the Trust Company had 
charge of the doctor's affairs and asked me if I 
could accompany him to the office and let him in to 
look over the papers there.” 

“And did you ? ” 

“I supposed, of course, that it was all right; I 
knew the doctor had had an account there. I went 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 


>93 

with him up to the office and let him look over the 
papers.” 

“ What papers? ” 

“ There were no private papers of any sort in the 
office. The doctor kept nothing there but the record 
of his cases. The man, I recall, seemed rather dis- 
appointed. He went through all the papers, ap- 
parently searching for something that was not there. 
I told him I thought all the doctor’s private papers 
were in his house at Rockmont. But why are you 
asking me all these questions ? Who was he ? ” 

“ That man,” explained Tilt, now thoroughly con- 
vinced that Miss Addison was keeping nothing back, 
“ didn’t come from the Trust Company at all. His 
name wasn’t Raymond. He was Paul Carew.” 

“And who on earth is Paul Carew ? ” cried the 
astonished nurse. “ What on earth was he trying 
to find there ? ” 

“ Carew is engaged to Mollie Manners — to the 
girl to whom Doctor Rhodes left all his money.” 

“ I can’t understand it,” cried Miss Addison, per- 
plexed. “ Why did he use an assumed name ? Why 
did he want to go through the doctor’s papers? 
What was he after ? ” 


i 9 4 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ I can't understand it, either. He told Miss 
Manners that he was trying to make an investiga- 
tion of the mystery, and that he thought among the 
doctor's papers he might find some clue." 

“ Why was he investigating ? " 

“ He told her that it was because he knew she 
was worrying about the murder, and he wanted to 
get it cleared up." 

“ Well, I must say," the nurse commented, “ it 
seems to me a mighty funny way to go about it, 
taking an assumed name and everything." 

“ That's exactly the way it struck me," said Tilt, 
“but his story seems to fit with yours. Anyhow, 
his explanation seemed to entirely satisfy Miss 
Manners." 

Rose Addison shook her head doubtfully, and for 
a moment or two they sat there pondering over the 
explanation that Carew had given. Although, now 
that he had heard Miss Addison's version of it, Tilt 
was compelled to admit that Carew's explanation 
seemed logical, he still was inclined to believe that 
there was something fishy about it, and he was sure 
that Miss Addison agreed with him. As he sought 
to analyze Carew's actions, he wondered if his feel- 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 


>95 


ings toward Mollie were responsible for his seeing 
everything lopsided where Carew was concerned. 

But what were his feelings toward Mollie ? 

The more he thought about her now, the more 
puzzled he felt about his own attitude toward her. 
Ever since they were youngsters, he and she had 
been the best of pals. When her engagement had 
been announced, he had been conscious of a distinct 
feeling of annoyance and resentment. More re- 
cently he had been certain — that is, almost cer- 
tain — that he loved her. Yet now, whenever he 
thought about her, there came to his mind the pic- 
ture of her as'he had seen her last, her brilliant dark 
eyes flashing with rage at him as she heard him 
accuse the man she loved. That one moment had 
revealed to him an ungovernable temper that he had 
had no idea she possessed. Somehow his ardor for 
her seemed to have been consumed in the flame of 
her wrath toward him. Nor had the story Mrs. 
Manners had confided to him of her birth served to 
stimulate his affection. His feeling toward her, he 
realized almost regretfully, was not, — if indeed it 
really ever had been — love. It now was more akin 
to pity, — pity for what lay behind her. 


196 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Isn’t there some way,” suggested Miss Addi- 
son, ‘‘that we could check up Mr. Carew’s story 
and see if he really has been making an investiga- 
tion ? ” 

Before Tilt could answer her, the telephone rang, 
and Tilt rose to answer it. 

“ It’s Devan,” he cried delightedly, as he recog- 
nized the familiar voice. 

“ I’m speaking from Boston,” said Devan. “ I’ll 
be home to-morrow morning.” 

“ What luck? ” asked Tilt guardedly, mindful of 
what the local police chief had told him of the pos- 
sibilities of listening in. 

“ I know who did it,” said Devan calmly. 

“ You know,” cried Tilt excitedly, while Miss 
Addison, all a-tremble at what she had heard of the 
one-sided conversation, rose and stood expectantly 
beside him. “ Who was it? ” 

“ I must not tell that yet,” replied Devan. “ The 
motive is missing. I’ve got to establish the motive 
before I make any statement. Good-by.” 

Tilt vainly jiggled the receiver, trying to recall 
Devan; and then he disappointedly put up the re- 
ceiver and turned to Miss Addison. 


MISSING — A MOTIVE 


197 

“ Devan says he knows who did it, but he won’t 
tell until he establishes the motive.” 

“ I wonder whom he means ? ” said the nurse 
thoughtfully. “ I wonder whom it could have 
been? ” 

“ I haven’t the slightest idea,” admitted Tilt. 
“ I’m all balled up about the thing. Anyhow, he’ll 
be here to-morrow, and I’ll make him tell us every- 
thing. He has it all cleared up but the motive, and 
if he knows who did it, that ought to be easy to 
establish.” 

“ The motive,” said Miss Addison, as if thinking 
aloud. " That’s going to be the hardest part of it. 
What motive — what possible motive could any one 
have for murdering such a man as Walter Rhodes? ” 


CHAPTER XIII 
A NEW AEEIANCE 

“ But Dick,” Tilt protested half-angrily to Devan, 
“ it isn’t fair. Here I have told you everything that 
has happened while you were away, and there was a 
lot, and you haven’t told me a thing. You’re as 
silent as a clam about what you learned in Boston. 
You might at least tell me who it is that you sus- 
pect.” 

“ No, Bill,” his friend replied. “ It isn’t fair of 
you to ask me. Murder is too grave a charge to 
make against any one until the proof is absolute.” 

“ But you persist in saying that you know the 
murderer.” 

“That is correct,” said Devan, with provoking 
calmness. “ I told you my method. I have as- 
sembled all the facts about the murder that I have 
been able to gather. The completed picture indi- 
cates only one person. It is the sort of person who 
might have done such a crime. There was plenty 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


199 

of opportunity for this particular person to have 
done it. But one important detail in the picture is 
missing. So far as I have been able to discover, 
this person had no motive to commit such a crime. 
That’s the puzzling part of it. Before I say any- 
thing, before I accuse any one, I must establish a 
plausible motive for the murder.” 

“ Tell me this much — was it an Italian? ” 

“ I think I can answer that. The person who 
killed Rhodes was not an Italian.” 

“ Then,” cried Tilt disappointedly, “ you don’t 
think that little Italian girl, Conchita, is mixed up 
in it?” 

“ I’m positive that this girl had nothing whatever 
to do with the murder.” 

“ But the burglary — the attempt to rob Rhodes’s 
safe. You’ve got to admit she was concerned in 
that. She tripped me up. I don’t care what you 
say, I know she did it to let the burglar get away. 
And remember, I caught her afterward spying on 
the Rhodes house.” 

“If you are so certain that she knows about the 
murder, why don’t you hunt her up and tax her 
with it? ” 


200 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“Well, at least you’ll admit that the burglar 
and the murderer must have been the same per- 
son.” 

“ I haven’t gone into that phase of it yet,” Devan 
replied, “ but I hardly think it likely.” 

“ Damn it,” cried Tilt, “ I am going to get hold 
of that girl and make her talk. If you don’t watch 
out, I’ll solve this mystery and have the murderer 
in jail while you still are hunting a motive.” 

“ Go ahead,” said Devan calmly. “ I’m going 
over to have another chat with Mrs. Manners.” 

As his friend departed, Tilt flung himself angrily 
down in the porch hammock, feeling aggrieved with 
all the world. He had counted confidently on learn- 
ing from Devan the result of his investigations, but 
Devan, since his return from Boston, had been per- 
sistently reticent about everything. He still was 
apparently busy all day long on the case, but most 
of his evenings he now spent at the Manners home, 
talking it over with Mrs. Manners and Mollie, and 
with Ed and Paul Carew, when they happened to be 
there. The privilege of sharing in these conversa- 
tions was denied to Tilt, for Mollie still was relent- 
less in her attitude toward him. Mrs. Manners, it 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


201 


was true, the time or two that he had met her since 
his quarrel with Mollie, had seemed friendly enough, 
but as she seldom left the house he had no oppor- 
tunity for talking with her. Ed Manners he had 
not seen at all. Only Kit — the Terrible Kit — it 
seemed to Tilt had remained loyal in her friendship 
toward him. Recently, while Devan was chatting 
with the rest of her family, she had acquired the 
habit of slipping in for a few minutes every evening 
for a chat with Tilt, keeping him posted on the 
village gossip. 

As he had anticipated, the publication of the will, 
following his filing papers as executor, had set the 
tongues wagging in the whole community. Both 
in the colony and in the village there had been much 
speculation as to why Rhodes's money had all been 
left to Mollie Manners. Apparently, too, Pressly 
Hart had been busy spreading his malicious theory 
that it was Ed Manners who had committed the 
crime, for while nothing was being said openly, 
there were many covert hints both in the gossip and 
in the newspapers that Ed might soon be arrested. 
All the neighbors of the Manners family seemed to 
have taken sides one way or the other, and half of 


202 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


the little colony now was not on speaking terms with 
the other half. 

Was it Ed that Devan suspected? That was a 
question that Tilt kept putting to himself without 
finding a satisfactory answer. Was that Devan’s 
reason, he wondered, for spending so much time at 
the Manners home. Was he watching Ed, hoping 
that he might say or do something to betray the 
motive that actuated the murder? 

Or was it Paul Carew ? 

To Devan, but to no one else, Tilt had voiced his 
suspicions of Carew, as he told of the visit he had 
paid to the doctor’s office and the ruse he had em- 
ployed to persuade Miss Addison to let him have 
access to Rhodes’s papers, but Devan merely had 
listened in silence, without making any comment. 
Yet, Tilt recalled, right at the beginning Devan had 
seemed to think the murderer must have been some 
one in the colony, more than likely some one in the 
club. That would seem, Tilt argued with himself, 
to indicate that Devan suspected either Ed or Paul 
Carew, but which ? 

As he lay there going over the situation for the 
thousandth time, Kit slipped noiselessly up on the 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


203 

porch, and plumping herself down on the top step, 
proclaimed her presence by hurling a porch pillow 
into his face. 

“ Say, Bill,” she said soberly, as he rose up to toss 
it playfully back at her, “ there's something I want 
to ask you.” 

“ How unusual. You’re always a human ques- 
tion mark.” 

“ But this is important — dreadfully important.” 

“ Oh, in that case,” he said, with mock solemnity, 
“ we will give the matter our best attention. What 
is it you wish to kncfw, Miss Manners? ” 

“ When people have babies, don’t they make 
records of them ? ” 

“ What on earth are you driving at ? What kind 
of records? ” 

“ I don’t mean records ; certificates — birth cer- 
tificates, I think they call them.” 

Tilt hesitated a minute before he answered her. 
He wondered what she was trying to get at. Kit 
had an uncanny way of learning things she was not 
supposed to know. He wondered if in some way 
she had gained knowledge of Mollie’s adoption. 
The secret of Mollie’s birth, so far as he knew, was 


204 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

confined to Mrs. Manners and Ed, Carew and him- 
self, and old Hodder. He certainly had dropped 
no hint of it to Kit, and he was positive that none 
of the others would intentionally have revealed it to 
her. 

“ Yes,” he answered after a pause, “ whenever a 
child is born, there is supposed to be filed a certifi- 
cate of birth.” 

“ Who files it?” 

“ The doctor, I believe.” 

“ Where is it filed?” 

“ I’m not sure. In the county clerk’s office, I 
suppose.” 

“ Does it tell everything — the baby’s name and 
the father’s name and the mother’s name ? ” 

“ I suppose so. I never filed one.” 

Tilt was positive now that Kit was on the trail 
of Mollie’s secret, and he was wondering what he 
ought to do about it. If Kit had a suspicion that 
Mollie was an adopted sister, he knew Kit’s char- 
acter well enough to realize that she would keep at 
it until she found out what she wanted to know. 
Should he tell her everything and pledge her to 
secrecy ? That would probably be the wisest course, 




A NEW ALLIANCE 


205 

he decided, but Kit’s next question revealed that all 
his surmises were wrong. 

“ When a baby hasn’t any father — like Con- 
chita’s — what do they do ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Tilt, relieved, reassured 
that Mollie’s secret was safe. “ I suppose that if 
the father’s name can be ascertained, it is put in the 
record. Why are you asking ? ” 

“ You know, Bill,” said Kit, rising suddenly and 
coming over to the hammock and sitting down con- 
fidentially beside him, “ ever since that night, I’ve 
had a feeling that Conchita knows who killed Doctor 
Rhodes. I’m confident she’s mixed up in it some 
way. There’s that message that we got, * Find the 
girl,’ and then her being there at the burglary and 
watching our house and everything; so I’ve been 
trying to find out everything I could about her. I 
found out when her baby was born. It was on 
October 10 last year, but I haven’t been able to 
find out who its father was.” 

“How did you find out when it was born?” 
asked Tilt curiously. 

“ I went down to Conchita’s house, the Burrelis’, 
in the village,” explained Kit calmly. “ Conchita 


206 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


and her grandmother were there, and I made a fuss 
over the baby and asked when its birthday was. It 
is a cunning thing.” 

“Why are you so anxious to know about its 
father?” 

“ I was thinking,” explained Kit. “ Why should 
a girl help a burglar? It’s a risky business, and I 
wondered what would make her do it, taking a 
chance on getting arrested and everything. There 
could only be one reason. She was doing it for 
some one she loved. A girl would do anything for 
a man if she really loved him. So I figured it out 
that the reason Conchita was there outside that night 
was because some one she loved had asked her to 
do it. More than likely the man she loved would 
be the father of her baby. If we could find out who 
he was, maybe we'd find out, that he was the 
burglar.” 

“ By Gad,” cried Tilt, “ I think there’s some- 
thing in that. It’s certainly worth looking into. 
I’ll try to-morrow to dig up that birth certificate.” 

“ I expect it was Doctor Rhodes who made it 
out,” said Kit. “ I know he went there to see Con- 
chita when she was sick. And say, Bill, promise 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


207 

me ” — she laid one of her hands appealingly on his 
arm — “ don’t say' anything about it to any one, 
Mr. Devan, or anybody. They might laugh at me, 
and I don’t like to be laughed at.” 

“You bet I won’t,” said Tilt, delighted at the 
prospect of putting something over on Devan and 
getting square with him for his reticence about the 
case. 

“And say, Bill,” said Kit, snuggling a little closer 
to him, “ there’s something else. You remember 
the other day you showed me that message — the 
one that Doctor Rhodes was writing — and told me 
about some one having mailed it to Mollie. You 
showed me the envelope it came in. Have you still 
got it? ” 

“ Yes, it’s in my wallet.” 

“ Can I see it again ? ” 

In reply, Tilt drew out his wallet and handed it 
to her. Kit sprang up and ran into the hall where 
there was a light, and an instant later called out 
excitedly: 

“ Oh, Bill, Bill Tilt, come in here, quick.” 

Puzzled to account for her behavior, he vaulted 
out of the hammock and ran into the hall. Kit, her 


208 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


face ablaze with excitement, was holding up the 
envelope under the light and with it another piece 
of paper. 

“ Look, look, Bill ! ” she exclaimed. “ It’s the 
same writing.” 

Wonderingly, Tilt snatched the two pieces of 
paper from her hand and examined them. On the 
envelope Mollie had given him was her name and 
address scrawled in a childish, untrained hand. On 
the other paper was written the words, “ Miss Mollie 
Curran” and an address. 

Unquestionably the handwriting was the same. 
The “ M ” that was used in both was the same ill- 
made capital. The same badly formed, irregular 
letters, the same uphill slope appeared in each. 

“ Where'd you get this? ” he asked eagerly. 
“ Whose writing is it ? ” 

“ It’s Conchita's,” said Kit. " They are the same, 
aren't they ? ” 

“ You bet they are,” said Tilt jubilantly. “ Kit, 
you're a wonder. How'd you ever get it ? ” 

“ When you showed me that envelope, that writ- 
ing looked sort of familiar, and I kept thinking and 
thinking and trying to remember where I had seen 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


209 


it before, and it wasn’t any use. I just couldn’t 
remember. Then one day — it was after we had 
caught Conchita at the doctor’s — I was thinking 
about her. You know she was in the same room 
with me that winter I went to the public school out 
here, and I remembered the funny scrawls she used 
to make on the blackboard, and it looked like hers, 
but I wasn’t sure. Writing with chalk and with a 
pen looks different.” 

“ But how did you get this?” interrupted Tilt. 
“ Tell me about that.” 

“ That’s really what I went down to Conchita’s 
house for this afternoon. I remembered there was 
a girl, Mollie Curran, that used to be in our room 
at school, and I pretended I wanted to find her and 
asked Conchita if she knew where Mollie lived. 
She gave me the address, and I asked her to write 
it down for fear I’d forget it.” 

“ You’d make a wonderful detective, Kit,” said 
Tilt admiringly. “ I didn’t think you had it in you.” 

“ You’re always used to be so busy with Mollie 
that you never did notice me,” said Kit half-plain- 
tively. “ I know lots more than you think I do, 
Bill Tilt.” 


210 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


Could it be that the child had been jealous of his 
attentions to Mollie ? Tilt shot a quick look at Kit 
as she stood there under the light, and caught his 
breath. He always had thought of her as just a 
child, an awkward, bothersome youngster, all legs 
and arms; but as he looked at her now, her bobbed 
black hair shining under the light, her eyes sparkling 
with excitement, her parted lips revealing two regu- 
lar rows of beautiful white teeth, her tanned cheeks 
reddening under his gaze, he realized suddenly that 
right under his nose she had grown up, that she was 
almost a woman, and more than that, that she al- 
ready was a ravishing little beauty. 

“ Well, anyhow,” she said, letting her eyes drop 
confusedly, “we’ve got the goods on Conchita, 
haven’t we, Bill ? ” 

“We certainly have. There’s no question that 
it must have been she who mailed that scrap of 
paper to Mollie. But the devil of it is, how did 
she get hold of it, and why did she mail it to 
Mollie?” 

“ I know,” said Kit confidently. “ The man who 
did the murder, the same man that tried to get into 
the safe, is her lover. She must have been watch- 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


211 


in g at the clubhouse, just as she was at the doctor's. 
Maybe she was watching there the next morning to 
see who discovered the body, and when she saw that 
paper lying there, she must have slipped in and 
grabbed it while you and Ed were telephoning." 

“ That sounds logical, but it doesn’t account for 
her mailing it to Mollie.” 

“ Maybe he made her do it to throw suspicion 
away from him. Maybe she was afraid to tell him 
about it and didn’t know what else to do with it. 
Bill, you’ve just got to find out right away who the 
father of Conchita’s baby is — if there’s any name 
at all on the certificate." 

“ You bet I will," said Tilt determinedly, “ and 
if there is any name on that certificate, it’s a hun- 
dred to one that we have the name of the mur- 
derer." 

But not a word of this did he tell to Devan, for 
he was now more determined than ever to see if he 
himself couldn’t solve the mystery, — that is, he and 
Kit together. He left the house as usual the next 
morning, but from the station he telephoned his 
office that he would not be in until afternoon and 
then took a train in the opposite direction for the 


212 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


clerk’s office in the county seat. As he rode to his 
destination, his thoughts kept constantly reverting 
to the Terrible Kit. What a wonderful young 
person she had shown herself to be. Her intuitions 
were simply marvelous and her logic was surpris- 
ing for so young a girl. How old was she? He 
counted back and was surprised to discover that Kit 
was seventeen. He had always thought of her as 
much younger than that. And how pretty she had 
grown — really much prettier than Mollie. She was 
a nice kid, too, loyal and likable, and he flattered 
himself there was no question but that she thought 
a lot of him. 

He was whistling merrily as he strode up to the 
courthouse, in better spirits than he had been for 
many a day, in fact since that morning when he had 
set out for the early game of tennis with Mollie at 
the club. 

No obstacles were put in his way for obtaining 
the information he sought, but search of the records 
took some time. When at last the birth certificate 
of Conchita Burreli’s baby was laid before him, the 
facts it set forth proved most astounding. 

With eyes almost starting from his head, hardly 


A NEW ALLIANCE 


213 


believing what he read, Tilt scanned the original of 
the certificate, filed in Walter Rhodes’s well-known 
hand. 

“ Mother, Conchita Burreli, unmarried.” 

“ Father (putative), Paul Carew.” 


CHAPTER XIV 

A PLAN THAT FAILED 

With a certified copy of the birth certificate in 
his pocket, Tilt felt that at last he was in a position 
to supply the missing motive for which Richard 
Devan had so vainly sought. As he took the train 
back to the city, he was busily piecing the whole 
thing together, surprised to discover how well this 
last discovery accounted for so many of the cir- 
cumstances that had puzzled him. 

Rhodes, of course, knowing Paul Carew’s char- 
acter and relations with Conchita, must have threat- 
ened him with exposure unless he broke off his en- 
gagement to Mollie. It must have been Carew who 
had been the mysterious visitor at the doctor’s of- 
fice, the man the doctor himself had admitted so 
secretly a few days before the tragedy. Carew ap- 
parently had persisted in carrying out his plan to 
marry Mollie, and it seemed most probable that it 
was he who had telephoned to Rhodes and had ar- 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 215 

ranged to meet him at the club. Rhodes would 
have been eager to meet Carew and settle the matter. 

As Tilt racked his brains now to recall the events 
just preceding the murder, he remembered that 
Carew had not taken Mollie home but had begged 
off on the plea of business. He recalled, too, that 
Carew on that night had seemed somewhat nervous. 
Paul had been in the army, so naturally would be 
familiar with the use of a rifle. If Carew were the 
murderer, and Tilt was now firmly convinced that 
he must have been, it would account for Conchita 
having been a witness of the crime and perhaps for 
her discovery of the slip of paper. 

It was entirely conceivable, too, that she might 
have mailed it to Mollie out of sheer jealousy. She 
must have known of Carew’s engagement. Perhaps 
she might even have been trying to direct sus- 
picion toward Mollie in the hope of thwarting her 
marriage to Carew. This explanation would ac- 
count, it seemed to Tilt, for all of Carew’s extraor- 
dinary actions, — his efforts to prevent Mollie from 
taking any part in the investigation, his ruse for 
gaining an opportunity of examining the doctor’s 
papers. More than likely, haunted by guilt, he 


216 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


feared that the doctor might have left some written 
record that would betray his relations with Con- 
chita and forever bar him from marrying Mollie. 

Undoubtedly, Tilt decided, it had been Carew 
who was trying to open the doctor’s safe, while 
Conchita stood guard. Failing to find any of the 
private papers at the office, he naturally would have 
planned to raid the safe, to make certain that it con- 
tained no evidence of his guilt. As Tilt recalled 
the figure he had seen kneeling before the safe, he 
wondered that he had not recognized it at once as 
Carew’s. He recalled, too, that when Carew ap- 
peared a few minutes later at the Manners house, he 
was all out of breath, as if he had been running. 

Every single fact — even to the sight of Con- 
chita jealously peering through the window at Carew 
and Mollie — seemed to point to Carew’s guilt. 

Detained from his office for several hours by his 
visit to the county seat, Tilt was much later than 
his usual time in leaving the office, and snatching a 
hasty bite at the station, caught a train that got 
him home a little after eight. He was eager to re- 
veal his amazing news to Devan and would have 
enjoyed crowing over him, but he felt that the news 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


217 


was not rightfully his to proclaim. It surely be- 
longed to Kit to get all credit for solving the mys- 
tery. He must tell her first, before he told any one 
else. It was her shrewdness in getting the sample 
of Conchita’s handwriting and her cleverness in sug- 
gesting the birth records be looked up that had sup- 
plied the missing clues. The news was Kit’s — not 
his. 

When he reached home, he was surprised to find 
quite an assemblage there, — Pressly Hart, John 
Dixon and Chief of Police Smithers. Devan was 
there, too, busy splicing an extra receiver to the tele- 
phone in the living room. 

“ Hello, Bill,” said Devan. “You’re just in 
time. I was hoping you’d get here. We are just 
arranging a little test that I think will establish 
the identity of the man who murdered Doctor 
Rhodes.” 

“ What is it? ” asked Tilt wonderingly. 

“ I’ll explain it a little later,” Devan replied, as he 
completed his arrangements and sat down with the 
group, “ but first, gentlemen, I wish to tell a story, 
to explain what I was doing in Boston.” 

“ IPs about time you did,” interjected Hart. 


2 18 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“As some of you know,” continued Devan, 
“ Walter Rhodes had been an officer in the navy. 
He went to the Philippines just after the war with 
Spain and was reported killed there. Just before 
his departure he had married, and in his absence 
a child was born — a girl. Believing him dead, his 
wife remarried. Months afterward, he was found 
in a Filipino village, his memory gone from a blow 
on the head. Restored to health by an operation at 
Manila, as soon as he was able to travel, he re- 
turned to this country, escorted by old Hodder, the 
man who looks after your boats here, eager to find 
the wife of whom he had lost all trace. 

“ After weeks of searching, he found her married 
to another man. Her second husband, in despair 
over the situation, committed suicide, and Mrs. 
Rhodes herself broke down under the strain. She 
became violently insane and tried to kill Rhodes, 
and old Hodder saved his life. Assured by medical 
advice that there was no hope of his wife ever re- 
covering her reason, Rhodes eventually placed her 
in a small private sanitarium just outside Boston, 
run by a couple named Karuski. He came into 
some money about that time and placed it all in 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


219 


trust for his wife’s maintenance; and there, in the 
custody of the Karuskis, or rather of Mrs. Karuski, 
for the man died years ago, she has remained ever 
since.” 

“And the child — what became of it?” ques- 
tioned Dixon eagerly. 

“ It was adopted by a friend of Rhodes and 
reared without ever knowing that Walter Rhodes 
was any relation.” 

“ It wasn’t ” Pressly Hart hesitated, appalled 

at the thought that had come to him — “ It couldn’t 
have been Mollie Manners.” 

“Yes,” said Devan. “She is Rhodes’s own 
daughter.” 

“ So that’s why he left her all his money,” com- 
mented Dixon. “ That explains the will.” 

“ That’s not all it explains,” Devan continued. 
“ Sophie Karuski had a son. With the ample funds 
she received for taking care of Mrs. Rhodes and 
other patients, she was able to see that he had a good 
education. This son went to Cornell and later was 
an officer in the army. Naturally he and his mother 
must always have been interested in following the 
career of this husband of their best-paid patient. 


220 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

The son, learning of Rhodes’s prosperity, turned up 
here in Rockmont.” 

“ You don’t mean Paul Carew? ” cried Hart. 

“ Yes,” said Devan. “ He had Americanized his 
name. I do not imagine Rhodes ever associated 
him with the sanitarium that so long had sheltered 
his wife.” 

“ What did he want here ? What did he come 
for?” asked Chief Smithers. 

“ What his original idea may have been I do not 
know,” said Devan. “ He may have had some idea 
of putting his knowledge to criminal use and black- 
mailing Rhodes. He must have known that Mollie 
was the doctor’s daughter. Apparently, after look- 
ing over the situation, he decided that the easiest 
way to gain the Rhodes fortune would be to marry 
Mollie.” 

All the while Devan was talking, Tilt had sat 
listening in silence, regretting that Devan had con- 
sidered it necessary to tell the story of Mollie’s par- 
entage. Presumably it was bound to come out be- 
fore the murder could be explained, but it seemed a 
pity to recite it in the presence of such an inveterate 
gossip as Pressly Hart. 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


221 


“ Yet/’ continued Devan, “ though many things 
point to Paul Carew or Karuski as the murderer of 
Rhodes, there is still one thing that puzzles me. 
Nothing that I have discovered seems to establish a 
motive, a motive sufficiently potent to make him 
commit a murder. His marriage to Miss Manners 
assured, he must have known that Rhodes sooner or 
later would leave the girl his fortune. It seems in- 
credible that he should have been so money hungry 
that he would risk disgrace and punishment to get in 
advance what was certain to be his wife’s. While 
all these facts have been in my possession for a 
week, I have hesitated to tell them to you and have 
been spending night after night with Carew, hoping 
that he would in some way betray himself, but he 
seems to be on guard. 

“ With a motive lacking, I hesitated to suggest 
his arrest, but finally I decided to lay the facts be- 
fore you and be guided by your judgment, after 
making one other test. You recall, gentlemen, that 
an hour before Rhodes was murdered, he was called 
to the telephone. Mrs. Grady talked with the per- 
son who called him. At nine o’clock to-night I have 
arranged for Paul Carew to call me here. Mrs. 


222 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


Grady is waiting out in the kitchen. I propose to 
have her listen at this second receiver. If she 
recognizes the voice of Carew as the person who 
called up Rhodes that night, what do you say, gen- 
tlemen — should he be arrested ? ” 

“ Sure, arrest him — the hound — coming around 
here under another name,” said Pressly Hart. 

“ I would say, arrest him,” said Dixon. 

“ I’m for it,” announced Chief Smithers. 

“ And you, Tilt,” asked Devan, “ what is your 
answer ? ” 

“You can make no mistake in arresting Paul 
Carew,” said Tilt, speaking with confidence because 
of the discoveries that he and Kit had made, yet 
still keeping his knowledge to himself. Time 
enough to tell it, to explain the motive, when Carew 
had been arrested. 

Devan looked at his watch, and disappearing into 
the kitchen, returned with Mrs. Grady, whom he 
seated near the telephone. 

“ Mrs. Grady,” he said, “ you remember at the 
inquest that you told of some one having called 
Doctor Rhodes to the telephone after midnight, on 
the night he was killed.” 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


223 


“ Sure, I remember. ,, 

“ Would you know that voice if you heard it 
again ? ” 

“ Sure an’ I would that — a quare voice it was.” 

“ It was, I think you said, a man’s voice ? ” 

“ It sounded like a man’s voice, sort of husky 
like.” 1 

“ But it was a man’s voice ? ” 

“ It sounded like it, I’m telling you, though how 
could I be saying for sure and me not seeing who 
was talking ? ” 

“ But you’d know the voice again if you heard 
it?” 

“ That I would, what with it keeping ringing and 
ringing in my ears all the time, the very last mes- 
sage I ever took for the doctor, God rest his soul. 
Would I know that voice again? I would, I’m tell- 
ing you. Just let me hear it once again, and I’ll be 
telling you who killed Doctor Rhodes.” 

“ Very well,” said Devan, consulting his watch 
again, “ in a minute a man is going to call me here. 
I want you to take this extra receiver and listen. 
If it is the voice you heard, raise your hand like 
this.” 


224 tragedy at the beach club 

The telephone bell sounded. Breathless, the little 
group sat watching as Rhodes answered it. Mrs. 
Grady, her face screwed up ridiculously, sat holding 
the extra receiver to her ear. 

“ Hello, this is Devan,” they heard the investi- 
gator say, noting that he was careful not to mention 
the name of the man to whom he was talking. “ No, 
there’s nothing new. I thought there would be 
when I asked you to call me up, but there isn’t. I’ll 
see you to-morrow — to-morrow night — Good-by.” 

Eagerly they all had been watching the old house- 
keeper, confident that at any instant her hand would 
be raised, confirming their suspicions, but as Devan 
hung up the receiver, she dropped hers abruptly and 
looked about at their questioning faces with a com- 
ical air of bewilderment. 

“ And what’s it all about? ” she asked. “ Is it a 
joke you’re playing on me? 99 

“ The voice,” cried Devan, “ the voice — did you 
recognize that voice ? ” 

“ Sure an* I did that. It was Mr. Carew’s 
voice — him that’s engaged to Miss Manners.” 

“And that wasn’t the voice you heard that 
night? ” 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


22 $ 


“ Mr. Carew ? It was not. Sure, I’d have known 
his voice any time.” She looked about her, gazing 
into their faces with sudden suspicion. “ My 
God, it ain’t him you’re suspecting of killing the 
doctor ? ” 

“We suspect nobody,” said Devan in baffled 
tones, “ we just wanted to make sure that it was not 
he who had called the doctor that night.” 

“ It was not. I’ll swear to that,” said Mrs. 
Grady firmly. “ It was a quare husky-sounding 
voice, a voice I never had heard before, I’m telling 
you.” 

“ That will be all, Mrs. Grady,” said Devan, add- 
ing sternly, “ and I must warn you that you are to 
say nothing of this to any one.” 

“And it’s not like me to be telling what’s none of 
my business,” snorted the old woman indignantly, as 
she flounced out of the room. 

Left alone, the four men looked at each other 
blankly. All of them, even Tilt, had been confident 
that the experiment would confirm their theory. 

“ Well, if it wasn't Carew who called the doctor, 
who was it? That’s what I’d like to know,” said 
Pressly Hart nervously. 


226 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ It may have been some confederate,” suggested 
Dixon. 

“ Nothing that I have discovered indicates that he 
had any confederate,” said Devan. “ I don’t know 
what to make of it. I was positive the old lady 
would identify his voice.” 

“ Maybe she did and is lying about it,” suggested 
Chief Smithers. 

“ That’s out of the question,” said Tilt quickly. 
“ She was devoted body and soul to Rhodes and is 
as anxious as any of us to see his murderer dis- 
covered and punished.” 

“ Well, Mr. Hart,” said Devan, “ it is up to you 
to decide. Do you think the story I have related is 
sufficiently strong to order the arrest of Paul 
Carew ? ” 

“ I — I — really don’t know what to say,” stam- 
mered Hart. 

“ I don’t see what harm it can do,” said Dixon 
judicially. “If Carew is innocent, he ought to have 
no difficulty in proving his innocence. At any rate 
it will do no harm to have his real identity revealed. 
It seems to me it would be a shame to let his rela- 
tions with Miss Manners continue without her 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


227 

knowing who he is — a masquerading fortune 
hunter.” 

“ By all means his arrest should be ordered at 
once,” said Tilt. “ I am confident that once he is 
arrested the motive for the crime will be quickly 
revealed. I myself expect to be able to make public 
to-morrow some facts that will supply the missing 
motive.” 

“ What have you discovered, Bill ? ” asked Devan 
quickly, sensing from the confidence with which 
Tilt spoke that he was possessed of information he 
was keeping to himself. 

“ I can’t tell it even to you until to-morrow,” said 
Tilt. “All I can say is that I’ll produce some 
documents — some amazing documents — that will 
supply all the motive you want.” 

“ Where’d you get them ? ” demanded Pressly 
Hart eagerly. 

“ That is my secret — and somebody else’s,” said 
Tilt mysteriously. 

“ Perhaps in view of what you have said,” cau- 
tioned Dixon, “ it might be well to postpone the 
arrest until after these documents have been made 
public.” 


228 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


“ I'm agin that/' said Chief Smithers. “ The old 
woman knows we are suspicioning this fellow Carew, 
and what a woman knows, soon everybody knows. 
By to-morrow morning it’ll be all over town that 
we are after him, and he may skip out. I’m for 
taking no chances. I’m going to arrest him to- 
night — right away.” 

“ No, no,” cried Devan, “ you mustn’t do that. 
He’s over at the Manners house. Don’t arrest him 
there.” 

“ Very well,” said Chief Smithers, “ if you insist 
upon it, I’ll wait. But I warn ye, I’m taking no 
chances. I’m going to get out the whole police 
force — both of them — and we’ll trail him home 
and arrest him when he gets to the Inn. There 
ain’t no murderer going to slip through my fingers. 
I’m off right now.” 

It was an hour before Hart and Dixon left, and 
soon afterward Tilt and Devan retired, going to bed 
as soon as Smithers had telephoned that Carew had 
been arrested and was safe in the village prison 
under guard. 

Neither of them could sleep. In the minds of 
both Devan and Tilt there was the same unanswered 


A PLAN THAT FAILED 


229 

question. How would Mollie Manners take her 
fiance’s arrest ? 

What would Mollie say? 


CHAPTER XV 

INDISPUTABLE PROOF 

Kit Manners came bounding in on Bill the next 
morning as he was at breakfast. Devan, arising 
earlier, had already departed, and Bill was alone. 

“ Oh, Bill, Bill,” cried Kit, all excitement “ Is it 
true ? Has Paul Carew been arrested ? ” 

“ Yes, it’s true. He was arrested last night at the 
Inn just after he left your house.” 

“ What did you find out ? Did you have him 
arrested? Was he — had he been mixed up with 
Conchita ? ” 

Kit fired her questions at him in quick succession, 
her eyes shining with eagerness, and her lovely red 
lips parted, tense, quivering. 

For a moment Tilt did not answer her. He was 
wondering how she would take the news that Mollie 
was not her real sister. There was no use trying to 
conceal it from her any longer, for now that Devan 
had told it to Pressly Hart, it soon would be com- 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


231 

mon knowledge. At any rate, Kit, with her un- 
canny way of finding things out, would quickly learn 
it. He might as well tell her the whole thing, he 
decided. 

“ Go on, Bill,” she urged him. 44 Tell me every- 
thing.” 

“ How: did you know that Carew had been ar- 
rested ? ” 

44 I heard Mr. Devan telling Mollie. He came 
over to the house this morning early, before break- 
fast. I heard him asking for Mollie, and I won- 
dered what he wanted of her at that hour. When 
she slipped on a kimono and went down to see him, 
I was in the dining room eating my breakfast, and 
I guess they didn’t know I was there. 4 1 have some 
bad news for you,’ I heard him say, 4 but I wanted 
to be the first to tell you.’ Then he told her about 
Paul being arrested.” 

44 What did she do ? What did she say ? How 
did she take it? ” asked Tilt. 

Remembering the whirlwind of wrath he had 
stirred up when he had ventured to suggest to Mollie 
that her fiance had been deceiving her, he was in- 
clined to believe that Mollie’s affection for Carew 


232 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

was deep-rooted. There was no question in his 
mind that Devan, when he sought to break the un- 
pleasant news to her, must have let himself in for a 
bad time of it. 

“ I didn’t wait to hear,” answered Kit, to his great 
disappointment. “ I jumped up from the table and 
slipped out the side door and ran over here to find 
out what you’d done. What did you find out about 
Paul and Conchita? Go on, tell me. Tell me 
everything.” 

“ The birth certificate signed by Doctor Rhodes 
gives Paul Carew as the putative father of Con- 
chita’s child.” 

“ I knew it,” said Kit. “ What’s ‘ putative ’ 
mean ? ” 

“ It means * supposed ’ — can’t be proved.” 

“ That explains everything then, doesn’t it ? ” 

“ Yes, it undoubtedly does, but the strange part of 
it is, that nobody knows about this but you and me. 
I haven’t told a soul.” 

“ Then why’d they arrest Carew ? ” 

“ Devan has been gathering a lot of information 
about the case. He put it all before Pressly Hart 
and Dixon and Chief Smithers last night, and they 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


2 33 

decided to order Carew’s arrest, even though a test 
that Devan had planned was a complete failure." 

“ What test ? What was it ? ” 

“ You remember the night before Doctor Rhodes 
was killed somebody called him on the telephone 
after midnight. Well, last night Devan had Mrs. 
Grady here and got Carew to call him on the 'phone 
at nine o'clock. He had the old woman listening in 
and was confident that she would be able to identify 
Carew's voice, but she didn't. She knew at once 
whose voice it was but said positively it was not the 
person who had called her up. She insisted that 
she would know the voice again if she heard it, said 
it was a queer, husky-sounding voice, but she didn't 
seem quite sure whether it was a man's or a 
woman's." 

“ If it wasn't Paul who called up the doctor, who 
could it have been ? " asked Kit thoughtfully. 

“ I give it up. Do you suppose it could have 
been Conchita ? " 

“ No," said Kit, “ she has a clear, sweet voice." 

“ Or her old grandmother ? " 

“ She hardly speaks English. It couldn't have 
been her. Besides, I don't believe she knows about 


234 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

Paul and Conchita. I’m certain she doesn’t know 
who the baby’s father is. But tell me, Bill, if Mr. 
Devan didn’t know about this, why did he want Paul 
arrested ? What has he found out ? ” 

“ It’s a long story,” said Tilt, as he proceeded to 
relate in detail the strange tragedy that had befallen 
Rhodes in the early years of his marriage, of the 
insanity of his wife and her confinement in Sophie 
Karuski’s sanitarium and of the adoption of the 
child by her own parents. 

“ So Mollie was Doctor Rhodes’s daughter and 
not my real sister at all,” said Kit, her keen mind 
jumping ahead of his narrative. “ Do you know, 
Bill, that explains a lot of things to me. I’ve often 
wondered if Mollie were really my sister. We’re 
not a bit alike.” 

“ How? What do you mean? ” 

“We don’t look a bit alike, do we?” 

“ No,” confessed Tilt. “ I don’t believe you 
do, but there is often a difference in looks in 
families.” 

“Of course, everybody’s different, but there’s al- 
ways a sort of family resemblance; but it’s in our 
characters that I think we’re mostly different. Now 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


2 35 

I get mad easily, and I’m hopping mad for a second 
or so and then it’s all over. Mollie hardly ever gets 
angry. I only remember seeing her that way twice, 
and then she is terrible. I’m really afraid of her. 
She seems to go almost insane, and she never, 
never gets over it. She keeps on hating and 
hating the person she got angry at. I couldn’t do 
that.” 

“ There is a big difference between you,” admitted 
Tilt. 

“ But still,” said Kit, “ I don’t see what made Mr. 
Devan suspect Paul ? ” 

“ Paul Carew’s real name is Karuski,” explained 
Bill. “ He is a son of the woman who runs the 
sanitarium where Doctor Rhodes’s wife has been 
kept all these years.” 

A whistle of astonishment escaped Kit. 

“ I see it all now. All his life he has known 
about this rich man’s wife in his mother’s place, and 
he must have known about Mollie being the daugh- 
ter. He must have deliberately planned it all out, 
coming here and getting acquainted with everybody 
and then starting in to court Mollie to get her for- 
tune. I can understand, too, why he wanted Doctor 


236 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

Rhodes out of the way. Doctor Rhodes knew 
about him and Conchita and must have been trying 
to prevent his marrying Mollie. That explains it, 
doesn’t it, Bill ? ” 

“ That certainly supplies a motive. It also ac- 
counts for the mysterious visitor at Rhodes’s office a 
few days before his murder. To my mind it even 
explains the attempted burglary. I haven’t the 
slightest doubt that Carew was trying to get hold of 
the doctor’s papers to make sure that there was 
nothing in them that would betray his relations with 
Conchita.” 

“And it explains why Conchita was watching our 
house that night, too,” said Kit, “ and why she 
mailed that letter to Mollie. Poor, little Conchita! 
She must have been having a bad time of it. She 
must have loved Paul and to see him engaged to 
Mollie must have been terrible for her. It’s per- 
fectly awful when the man you love loves somebody 
else.” 

“ Probably Paul made her all sorts of promises 
about what they would do when he got hold of the 
money. I’m convinced that he is a thoroughly bad 
egg — coming here under an assumed name, getting 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


2 37 

that girl into trouble, plotting to get Mollie’s money, 
and then killing Rhodes. There’ll be no difficulty 
at all in convicting him.” 

“ But, say, Bill,” said Kit meditatively, “ isn’t it 
strange how it has all worked out, just the way 
ouija said? ” 

“Shucks!” said Tilt, “ouija had nothing to do 
with it.” 

“ You’ve got to admit,” retorted Kit, “ that when 
we asked ouija who killed Doctor Rhodes, right at 
the start it kept saying, ‘Ask Paul Carew ’; and that 
night we tried the automatic writing my hand kept 
writing, ‘ Find the girl. Find the girl.’ Every- 
thing that has come out is right in accord with that. 
How do you explain it? You’ve just got to believe 
in ouija.” 

“ I don’t explain it. I can’t. But it’s not ouija. 
Probably it’s this: you never liked Carew, and your 
subconscious mind made the board say that. That’s 
all there is to it. When you asked if Mollie were 
going to marry Paul Carew, don’t you remember it 
kept saying my name ? ” 

“ Well, she isn’t going to marry Carew, is she? ” 
cried Kit triumphantly. 


238 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ She isn’t going to marry me, either,” said Tilt 
gloomily. “ She won’t even speak to me.” 

“ Maybe it’ll be different now,” suggested Kit, 
though her face darkened as she made the sugges- 
tion, but before Tilt could make any further com- 
ment a caller was announced. 

It was Police Chief Smithers. 

“ Good morning, Mr. Tilt. Good morning, Miss 
Manners,” he said almost gaily as he entered, feeling 
very self-important over his work of the night be- 
fore. “ I just come to notify you, and you, too, 
Miss Manners, that you both are to be on hand this 
afternoon as witnesses in Judge Dickinson’s court at 
three o’clock, when there’ll be a preliminary hearing. 
I’m summoning everybody that knows anything at 
all about the case, old Hodder and everybody.” 

“ Tell me,” said Tilt, “ how did Carew take it 
when you arrested him ? ” 

“You remember how Mr. Devan wouldn’t hear 
to his being arrested while he was at the Mannerses. 
Well, as soon as I’d left here, I hurry back to the 
village, and I rout out the force. I take Casey and 
Muldoon both with me, and I post Muldoon near the 
Inn where he can see everybody who goes in. Casey 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


239 

and me goes out to the Mannerses, and Casey hides 
in the bushes. I wait about in the road until the 
suspected party comes out. Then, just casual like, 
I walks along with him, chatting about this and 
that, with Casey following along about a half a block 
behind, and him none the wiser.” 

“ Did he seem nervous or suspicious ? ” 

“ Not a bit of it. He walks along just as cool as 
a cucumber, never suspecting a thing. I walks with 
him right up to the door of the Inn, with Casey clos- 
ing in behind like we’d agreed upon and Muldoon 
edging up closer. Then just at the very door, I 
seizes him by one arm and Muldoon by the other, 
and Casey jumps around in front of him with drawn 
revolver, and I says, ‘ Paul Carew, alias Paul 
Karuski, I arrest you in the name of the law for the 
murder of Doctor Walter Rhodes.’ ” 

“And what did he do?” asked Devan, who had 
come in unobserved and had been standing listening 
intently to Smithers’ narrative. 

“ He just laughed,” said the Chief indignantly. 

“ Laughed ? ” echoed Kit, horror-stricken at the 
idea of levity under such thrilling circumstances. 
“Yes,” said Smithers; “he laughed and said, 


240 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

‘ Smithers,’ says he, * you’ve been going to the 
movies too much.’ ” 

“ He certainly is a cool one,” said Devan. “ But 
he’ll soon laugh with the other side of his mouth. 
The case against him is perfect, all but the motive. 
If I could only supply the missing motive, the case 
would be absolute.” 

“ Suppose you ask Kit about it,” suggested Tilt. 
“ I think she can tell you the motive.” 

Kit, visibly delighted at being thus thrust in the 
center of the stage, beamed triumphantly at Devan 
as he turned inquiring eyes in her direction. 

“ It’s perfectly simple,” she said. “ Paul Carew 
was the father of Conchita’s baby and Doctor 
Rhodes knew it and wouldn’t let him marry Mollie, 
so he killed Rhodes to get him out of the way.” 

“ What’s this ? ” cried Devan, his interest at once 
aroused. “ What are you talking about ? ” 

“ It is perfectly true,” said Tilt, producing the 
certified copy of the birth certificate. 

“ Well, I swan! ” exclaimed Smithers, as he and 
Devan together inspected the document. 

“And here’s something else,” said Tilt, taking 
from his pocket the envelope that had been mailed to 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


241 


Mollie. “ Kit has discovered that the handwriting 
on this envelope that contained the missing message 
Rhodes was writing that night is Conchita’s. See, 
here is another sample of it. There is direct evi- 
dence of the connection of Carew and Conchita with 
the murder.” 

“I congratulate you, Tilt,” said Devan. “You 
have found the motive that baffled me.” 

“ Don’t thank me,” said Tilt ; “ thank Kit. She 
did it all. Right from the start she suspected 
Carew, and she has gone about trying to solve the 
mystery with such intelligence that the entire credit 
should be hers.” 

“ It certainly should,” said Devan enthusiastically. 
“ But tell me what made you suspect Carew in the 
first place ? ” 

Flushing delightedly under Bill’s enthusiastic 
praise, Kit at Devan’s question seemed at once to be 
strangely embarrassed and at a loss what to say. 
She still firmly believed in the message that ouija 
had given her, but since Bill scoffed at it, it seemed 
to her that to mention it now would be almost like a 
breach of faith with him. Besides, they might 
laugh at her, and she did not relish such a prospect. 


242 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ I don't know," she said stumblingly. “ I guess 
I never liked him and — and — my subconscious 
mind maybe made me suspicious of him." 

“ Will the other Manners girl — Miss Mollie — 
be at the hearing this afternoon?" asked Chief 
Smithers suddenly, turning to Devan. 

“ Oh, yes," said Devan, “ she’ll be there. She’ll 
be glad to testify." 

“ How’d she take it when you told her ? " asked 
Tilt eagerly. It hardly seemed good form to be 
discussing such intimate matters before the village 
grocer, but he felt that he just must know. 

“ I think," said Devan judicially, “ that Miss 
Manners for some time past has gradually been be- 
coming aware that there are serious defects in the 
character of her lover. Even if he had not been 
arrested, I doubt if she would have continued in 
her engagement. She took the news quite calmly; 
indeed, it appeared to me that it came to her with a 
sense of relief." 

“ Do you think she suspected him ? ’’ asked Tilt 
quickly. 

“ I would not go so far as to say that. My 
observation has been, however, that while a criminal 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


243 

may for a time mask his character when among 
decent people, it is a hard role to sustain. When 
brought into intimate relations with the innocent- 
minded, he is sure, sooner or later, to betray him- 
self. A sweet girl like Miss Manners, even though 
she may at first have been strongly attracted by 
Carew’s personality, would be disillusioned as she 
became more intimate with him. ,, 

“ I never did think she really loved him,” inter- 
jected Kit. 

“Anyhow,” said Chief Smithers, “I guess his 
goose is cooked. With these here documents that 
Miss Kit and Mr. Tilt have dug up, we’ve sure got 
the goods on him right and proper, for all of his 
boasting.” 

“ What boasting? ” asked Tilt. “ You didn’t tell 
us anything about that.” 

“ I ain’t had a chance to tell it,” said the police 
chief aggrievedly. “ Things have been happening so 
fast around here I never did get to finish my story 
about arresting him.” 

“ Go on, tell us the rest of it,” directed Devan. 

“As I was saying, when I took him under arrest, 
he just laughed, and all the way to the station where 


244 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

I locked him up in a cell and put Muldoon on guard 
all night, he kept chuckling to himself. It made me 
sort of sore the way he kept chuckling and laughing, 
and I did my duty and warned him that anything he 
might say or do might be used as evidence against 
him. ,, 

“ Didn’t he say anything at all ? ” asked Tilt. 

“ Not from the time he was first arrested, when he 
made that there scurrilous remark about my going 
to the movies too much until I locked him in the 
cell. ,, 

“ But you said he was boasting.” 

“He did all right. Just as I was leaving, he 
chuckled again, and he says to me, says he, ‘ Smith- 
ers, you’ve made an ass of yourself arresting me. I 
didn’t kill Doctor Rhodes. I couldn’t have. I’ve 
got indisputable proof that I couldn’t possibly have 
done it.’ ” 

“ What do you suppose he meant by that? ” asked 
Tilt, turning inquiringly to Devan. 

“ I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Devan. 

“ If he didn’t do it, who else could have done it? ” 
cried Kit. 

“ I don’t know nothing about it,” said Smithers. 


INDISPUTABLE PROOF 


2 4 5 

“All I know is that them were his very words, ‘ in- 
disputable proof.* ” 

“ Indisputable proof,” repeated Devan, puzzled. 


CHAPTER XVI 
AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 

The last half-hour in Judge Dickinson’s court 
before the time set for the hearing of Paul Carew 
kept the court officers busy. The room began filling 
up with members of the Rockmont colony among 
whom the news of Carew’s arrest had spread with 
amazing rapidity even before the afternoon editions 
of the papers came out with great headlines. With 
one accord, the neighbors of the Manners family 
flocked to the court, where they sat gossiping in 
excited whispers, exchanging significant nods and 
every once in a while turning with interest toward 
the entrance as some of those more intimately con- 
cerned in the case came in. 

There was a flutter as Mollie Manners entered 
with her mother, escorted by her brother and Rich- 
ard Devan. Kit was with them, but she slipped 
away as they passed the doorway and sat down 
beside Bill Tilt, who in guarded whispers was dis- 
cussing the case with John Dixon. 

“ I don’t see,” Dixon had just observed, “ how 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 247 

there is a possible loophole for Carew. Devan and 
I have just gone over every angle of the affair with 
the county prosecutor, and he says the case is per- 
fect.” 

“ I’m inclined to think Carew was only bluffing 
about being able to prove his innocence.” 

The entrance of Chief Smithers accompanied by 
the Italian girl caused considerable commotion and 
much wonderment among the spectators, who had 
not yet learned just what Conchita’s connection with 
the case was. As she entered, Conchita was in tears, 
and from the tight grasp Smithers kept on her arm, 
it 'was evident that if not a prisoner, at least she 
had come most unwillingly to the hearing. As the 
hour approached, Doctor Dooner, the county physi- 
cian, bustled in, busily important, followed by Mrs. 
Grady and old Hodder. 

At three o’clock precisely an officer of the court 
led in Paul Carew, escorting him to a seat before the 
judge, where he at once became the observed of all 
eyes. Jauntily, insouciantly, he met the gaze of his 
friends and neighbors, looking as trim and dapper as 
if he had just come from his office instead of a night 
in a cell. 


248 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ He’s certainly brazen about it,” muttered Tilt. 

“ Seems cocksure of himself,” said Dixon. 

A keen- faced lawyer, whom no one recognized, 
took his seat beside Carew, and after a whispered 
conversation with him glanced about the room as if 
to see that his witnesses were present. The county 
prosecutor made a brief recital of the facts regard- 
ing the murder of Rhodes, offering Doctor Dooner 
as his first witness. As the latter advanced, visibly 
delighted at the opportunity for publicity, Carew’s 
lawyer — Max Schreyer, it developed that his name 
was — arose. 

“ Your Honor,” he said, “ there is no use wasting 
the time of the court. We admit the known facts — 
that Walter Rhodes was killed by a rifle shot in the 
Rockmont Club.” 

To Doctor Dooner’s great disappointment, the 
judge waved him aside, and Richard Devan was 
called. 

As briefly as he could, at the prosecutor’s direc- 
tion, Devan recited the facts as he had gathered 
them, telling of Rhodes’s marriage, of his being lost 
in the Philippines, of his wife’s remarriage, of his 
restoration to health and return to this country, of 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 249 

his finding his wife married to another man, and of 
the tragedy that followed. He told, to the utter 
bewilderment of most of the Rockmont colony 
present, who Mollie was — the daughter of Rhodes 
— and that her mother for years had been confined 
in the sanitarium of Sophie Karuski. 

For a moment or two the attention of every one 
was diverted from Carew to Mollie, who sat, her 
face hidden by a heavy veil, apparently unmoved by 
the recital. But quickly, as Devan went on with his 
story, the gaze of the audience shifted to the pris- 
oner. 

“ Investigating the fate of Rhodes’s wife,” said 
Devan, “ I learned that Mrs. Karuski had a son. 
This son, familiar with the history of his mother’s 
patient, learning that Rhodes was a wealthy man and 
knowing that Rhodes’s daughter had been adopted 
by the Manners family, after his return from the 
war came to Rockmont, came under an assumed 
name, and after establishing himself in the colony 
there, began an ardent suit for Miss Manners’ hand, 
undoubtedly with the intention of possessing himself 
of Rhodes’s fortune.” 

“ So far,” interrupted the judge, “ I fail to see 


250 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

that you have introduced any evidence that warrants 
accusing Mr. Carew of the doctor’s murder. If he 
were about to marry the doctor’s heir, what object 
would he have in making away with Rhodes ? Surely 
if your theory of the crime is correct, he would not 
have planned to murder Doctor Rhodes until after 
the marriage had taken place. It seems most im- 
probable that he would have endangered his matri- 
monial plans by committing this murder.” 

“ I admit, your Honor,” said Devan, “ that your 
point is well taken. Up until last night, I was 
utterly at a loss to account for the murder, but a 
fortunate discovery permits me to offer in evidence 
documents that tell beyond doubt why the death of 
Rhodes was necessary for him to carry out his 
nefarious plan.” 

For the first time since his appearance in the 
courtroom, Carew exhibited nervousness. As Devan 
spoke of documents, he gave a start, and his gaze 
roved about the courtroom. Catching sight for the 
first time of Conchita sitting beside Chief Smithers, 
he stared at her for a moment as if taken by surprise, 
and then, turning quickly, began a conversation with 
his lawyer in agitated whispers. 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 251 

“Unfortunately for the success of his plans,” 
Devan continued, “ Carew became involved with a 
girl in the village, an Italian girl. Conchita Burreli 
had a child, and I have here a birth certificate, signed 
by Doctor Rhodes, in which the putative father is 
given as Paul Carew. Knowing of this incident 
in Carew's life, Rhodes demanded that Carew 
break the engagement, threatening him with expo- 
sure.” 

“ Your Honor,” interrupted Carew's lawyer. 
“ This attack on my client's character is unwar- 
ranted. It in no way proves him guilty of murder, 
whatever other wrongs he may have committed. To 
expedite matters, however, we will admit that my 
client is a son of the woman in whose charge Doctor 
Rhodes's wife has been for many years. We will 
admit that he knew the identity of Doctor Rhodes's 
daughter, that he came he~e with the intention of 
marrying her if he could. We object to the state- 
ment that he used an assumed name. The records 
will show that his name was legally changed before 
he sought a commission in the army. We will even 
admit that Doctor Rhodes suspected him of being 
the father of Conchita Burreli's child, and we will 


252 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

further admit that Rhodes was trying to prevent my 
client’s marriage to his daughter.” 

Tilt and Dixon exchanged bewildered glances. 
They neither of them could understand the tactics 
of the defence. What possible motive could the 
attorney have in admitting all these circumstances 
that on their face so damaged his client’s case ? 

“ Bill,” whispered Kit, clutching his arm, “ they’re 
up to something — something crooked.” 

“ Your Honor,” said the lawyer, “ since we admit 
everything the prosecution has advanced, I would 
like now to call some witnesses who will prove be- 
yond any question that my client did not kill Walter 
Rhodes, that it was a physical impossibility for him 
to have done so.” 

Judge Dickinson, like the others in the courtroom, 
plainly puzzled by the turn affairs had taken, nodded 
assent^ and Schreyer at once called to the stand 
Harry Dane, the night clerk at the Rockmont 
Inn. 

“ Mr. Dane,” said the lawyer, “ do you recall 
seeing Paul Carew on the night before Doctor 
Rhodes was murdered? ” 

“ Yes. He hurried in to the hotel in his dinner 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 253 

coat after midnight, and as he rushed up to his room 
to change, he asked me to get a taxi and have it 
waiting. He said he had to catch the 12 : 40 into 
the city. I got the taxi for him, and he went off 
in it.” 

“ That’s all,” said Schreyer, calling the taxi 
driver, who corroborated the night clerk’s story in 
every particular. He had driven Carew directly to 
the station, getting him there at least five minutes 
before train time. 

The station agent was called and asked if he re- 
membered the circumstance. 

“ Sure, I remember it. While Mr. Carew was 
waiting, he stood at the ticket window talking to me. 
I was joshing him about going to the city at that 
time of night.” 

“ What did he say? ” 

“ He told me that he had an important engage- 
ment the first thing the next morning.” 

“ Did you see him get aboard the train? ” 

“ Yes. I closed the station as I heard the train 
coming and went out on the platform with Mr. 
Carew. I saw him get aboard.” 

A railroad conductor was the next witness. While 


254 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

he was not positive in his identification of Carew, 
he identified a punch mark in Carew’s ticket as his, 
and swore that he had been in charge of the 12: 40 
train on the night mentioned. As the final link in 
the alibi the lawyer was establishing, he introduced 
as a witness the night clerk in one of the big city 
hotels. 

“ Do you recognize the defendant?” asked the 
lawyer. 

“ I do,” said the witness, after he had carefully 
inspected him. 

“ When did you last see him ? ” 

“ He came into the hotel one morning several 
weeks ago about two in the morning and asked for a 
room. I told him we were full up. He said that 
it was important that he should be there at six the 
next morning, as he had an engagement to meet 
some one there, and asked if there was not some way 
in which I could fix him up.” 

“And did you? ” 

“ Yes, I let him occupy the room of one of our 
permanent guests who I knew was out of the city 
that night.” 

“ Do you recall just what night this was? ” 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 255 

“The register will show. He registered his 
name and address.” 

“ Did you bring the sheets of the register with 
you for the date that I requested you to ? ” 

“ Yes,” said the clerk, unrolling a small package 
he was carrying. 

Schreyer inspected it for a brief instant and then 
handed it to the judge, observing: 

“ Here, your Honor, you will see that on the night 
in question, on the night that Walter Rhodes was 
murdered, is Mr. Carew’s signature, and the 
hour — 2 a. m. When Mr. Carew sent for me after 
his arrest, the first question I asked him was to 
account for where he was on the night of the murder. 
He said that he had gone to the city on the last 
train and gave me a detailed account of his move- 
ments. Fortunately I was able to collect these wit- 
nesses to verify his statements. I submit that it 
was an impossibility for him to have committed a 
murder in Rockmont at or about one o’clock in the 
morning when his actions from the time he left 
the club at midnight are fully accounted for, when 
the records show that at the time the murder must 
have been committed he was miles away. In all my 


256 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

experience as a criminal lawyer, I have never seen 
so perfect an alibi. I therefore demand my client’s 
immediate discharge. ,, 

It was plain to every one that the alibi that Carew 
had succeeded in establishing had come as a bomb- 
shell into the midst of those who had been accusing 
him. The prosecutor glanced inquiringly at Devan, 
who shook his head despairingly. Tilt and Dixon, 
their heads close together, were holding a whispered 
conference, but any one could see from their disap- 
pointed faces that they realized how utterly their 
case had collapsed. Of all those concerned only Kit 
Manners seemed unaffected. As she had listened 
to the alibi as it was developed, she had turned to 
look at Carew, studying his face intently as if trying 
to read his thoughts. A look of annoyance that had 
come over her countenance as she saw the growing 
confidence with which he listened to the witnesses 
had all at once given place to a flash of quick under- 
standing. Turning around in her seat, she let her 
gaze rove to every comer of the courtroom, watch- 
ing the faces of the people, quickly passing by those 
whom she recognized, but studying the others care- 
fully, thoughtfully. Had any one been watching 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 257 

her instead of what was going on in the front of 
the courtroom, they must have recognized something 
more than mere curiosity in her glance, something 
purposeful, portentous. 

“ Mr. Schreyer,” said the judge, “ I congratulate 
you. However reprehensible your client’s conduct 
may have been in other respects, whatever his rela- 
tions may have been with the Italian girl, or what- 
ever his plans may have been for gaining possession 
of Rhodes’s fortune, or whatever his matrimonial 
intentions were, the alibi he has offered assuredly 
makes it physically impossible for him to have com- 
mitted this crime.” 

Turning to the prosecutor, he asked, “ Have you 
any evidence to offer — anything to offset the testi- 
mony of the witnesses we have just heard? ” 

“ Nothing, your Honor,” stammered the prosecu- 
tor. 

“ Mr. Devan,” said the judge, “ you have been 
investigating this case, and it was upon the facts 
that you assembled that the defendant was arrested. 
Are you convinced, after hearing these witnesses, 
that it was impossible, physically impossible, for Mr. 
Carew to have committed the murder? ” 


258 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ I’m convinced,” said Devan, “ though I can’t 
understand it at all. Every known fact points to 
Paul Carew as logically the guilty man.” 

“ But,” said the judge, “ the alibi these witnesses 
establish is proof — indisputable proof — that he 
could not have done it.” 

Tilt, as he heard the judge repeat the very words 
that Carew himself had used, slumped down in his 
seat, dejected and disheartened, puzzled to know 
what to make of it. Only a few minutes before, as 
he and Devan had discussed the case with the prose- 
cutor, it had seemed to him that there was no possi- 
ble loophole by which Carew could escape. The 
evidence against him had seemed complete, positive, 
damning. Yet the alibi — the alibi so perfect that 
it seemed almost as if it had been prepared in ad- 
vance — had shattered their case. 

The mystery of the murder now seemed more 
baffling, more unsolvable than ever. If Carew 
hadn’t done it — who could have — Mollie? The 
possibility of her — the daughter of an insane 
mother, possibly tainted with homicidal mania — 
being the guilty one loomed up, horrifying him be- 
yond all measure. Resolutely he tried to shut out 


AN OUTCOME UNEXPECTED 259 

the repellent thought, but it kept coming again and 
again to his confused mind. 

A damaging sequence of memories flocked into 
his brain. Mollie loved Carew. Mollie had become 
insanely furious at him when he made reflections 
on Carew. If Rhodes had tried to warn her 
against Carew, would she not have been enraged — 
almost beside herself? Could it have been Mollie 
who had met Doctor Rhodes there in the clubhouse 
at one in the morning ? 

Reason against it though he tried, Tilt had to 
admit that there was no circumstance of the murder 
that could not be accounted for by laying it 
at Mollie’s door. In dazed bewilderment he 
hardly heard the rest of the proceedings or the 
commotion in the court as the judge’s voice rang 
out: 

“ I therefore discharge the defendant, Paul Carew, 
from custody.” 

But. as Carew, with a nod of thanks to the judge, 
turned to shake hands with his lawyer, and as the 
crowd, already buzzing with gossip, at the word of 
adjournment made a rush for outdoors, where freer 
discussion might prevail, Tilt was brought to by a 


260 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


quick jerk at his sleeve and an agonized cry from 
Kit. 

“ Bill, Bill ! Stop that woman. Don't let her get 
away ! ” 


CHAPTER XVII 
TWO DISCOVERIES 

At the sound of Kit's shrill cry, everybody in the 
courtroom stopped where they were. Even the 
judge, turning to retire to his chambers, paused to 
see what the commotion was about. 

“ Quick, Bill,” urged Kit, her voice rising above 
the tumult of the many voices and the shuffling feet. 
“ See that woman near the door, that tall woman in 
black. Don't let her get away. She mustn't. 
Stop her! ” 

Tilt's glance, and that of every one else, following 
in the direction in which the girl was pointing, saw 
near the door, struggling to get through the throng, 
a tall, muscular, masculine-looking woman with 
graying hair, garbed in rusty black. Her face now 
wore a malevolent look as she fought vainly to reach 
the door. Without understanding what it was 
about, or what possible interest Kit could have in 
stopping the woman, Tilt sprang quickly into the 


262 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


aisle, thrusting through the throng in a regular foot- 
ball rush to reach the woman's side. Up in the 
front of the courtroom, Carew, standing by his law- 
yer, gave one hasty look at the person under obser- 
vation and sank into a chair, covering his face with 
his hands, as there burst from him an amazed, 
agonized cry 

“ Oh, my God — she!” 

Mollie Manners through her veil cast a quick 
glance at the woman, but seemed not to recognize 
her or be in any way affected by her presence, but 
just as Tilt laid a restraining hand on the old 
woman's arm, from the front of the courtroom came 
a startled cry. It was from Mrs. Manners. 

“ Why, it's Sophie — Sophie Karuski ! ” 

At the sound of Mrs. Manners' voice, carrying 
her name, the woman renewed her struggles to reach 
the door. 

“ Let me pass,” she screamed hoarsely, as she 
endeavored to shake off Tilt's hold. 

“ Hold her ! Stop her ! ” came an excited cry 
from old Mrs. Grady. “ That's the voice — the 
quare husky voice — that called up the doctor the 
night he was murdered — the voice that I thought 


TWO DISCOVERIES 


263 

was a man's. I told you I'd know that voice again 
when I heard it. Hold her — it's her that killed 
the doctor, bad cess to her." 

Tilt’s prisoner ceased to struggle and turned de- 
fiant eyes to meet his. 

“ Why did you kill Rhodes ? " he asked. 

“ He was trying to block my son’s marriage — the 
marriage I'd planned and worked to bring about," 
she answered, with grim malevolence. “ I fixed 
him." 

“ Devan thinks," said Tilt, “ that she’s undoubt- 
edly insane, though she was shrewd enough in laying 
her plans. The confession she made to the police 
this afternoon shows that." 

He and Kit were seated as usual that evening on 
the Tilt porch, talking it over. Devan was over at 
the Manners house, apparently still finding pleasure 
in the habit he had acquired during his investiga- 
tions. 

“ But what gets me,” continued Tilt, “ is how you 
happened to spot old Mrs. Karuski in the courtroom 
and what made you suspect that it was she who had 
committed the crime." 


264 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 

“ Pooh ! ” said Kit. “ That was easy. There 
couldn’t have been very many persons that wanted 
Walter Rhodes killed. The only person whose 
plans he seemed to be upsetting was Paul Carew. I 
saw from the way things were going there that Paul 
himself couldn't have done it, and I asked myself 
who else was there. It must have been somebody 
that was interested in his plans — some one who 
loved him. Naturally I thought first of Conchita, 
but that didn’t seem logical. If she was going to kill 
anybody, she’d have killed Paul after she had that 
baby and he didn’t marry her. Then I tried to think 
who else there could be, and I thought of his mother, 
and all at once it was perfectly plain. She knew all 
about Mollie and everything, and about her son’s 
plan to marry Mollie. She loved her son, and when 
the doctor tried to thwart Paul’s plans, she just made 
up her mind to put him out of the way.” 

“You’re certainly a wonder, Kit,” said Bill 
admiringly. 

“You only think it’s wonderful, Bill,” said the 
girl, “ because you don’t understand women. When 
a woman really loves a man, she’ll do anything for 
him. When I got to thinking about Paul’s mother, 


TWO DISCOVERIES 26 5 

I realized that she must have done it because she 
loved him. Then all at once it came to me that if 
she loved him that much, maybe when he was there 
in that courtroom she’d be close at hand. I looked 
about, and I saw her. They look something alike, 
and I was sure it must be she. She looked sort of 
coarse — almost like a man — and I remem- 
bered what you had told me that Mrs. Grady had 
said about the voice over the doctor’s ’phone, and I 
wanted to hear her speak to make sure. Then the 
minute she spoke, Mrs. Grady cried out that it was 
the voice — and that’s all there was to it.” 

“ I guess you must be right, Kit,” said Tilt, 
thoughtfully, “ about her doing it out of love for her 
son. That confession she made this afternoon 
entirely exonerates him. He’s a weak rotter, but 
apparently he had nothing whatever to do with the 
murder. Carew says he did not know anything 
about it or even suspect that it was his mother who 
had done it.” 

“ She’s the stronger-minded of the two,” com- 
mented Kit. “ She planned the whole thing.” 

“ Yes, she admitted that she did. The whole 
plan was hers from the start. She was ambitious 


266 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


for her son, and while he was away in the war she 
chanced to gain an inkling of the extent of Rhodes’s 
wealth. It was she who sent Carew here to live 
and kept him supplied with funds. Everything was 
going well, and the engagement was announced, 
when Rhodes, knowing about Conchita, sent for 
Paul and demanded that he break the engagement at 
once. Paul, not knowing what to do, communicated 
with his mother. 

“ I doubt if Rhodes had the slightest suspicion of 
Carew’ s identity, or ever in any way connected him 
with the Karuski sanitarium. He probably never 
had seen Mrs. Karuski’s son, if indeed he knew that 
she had a son. The changed name, of course, con- 
cealed Paul’s identity. Rhodes’s only objection to 
the marriage was on account of the affair with Con- 
chita. 

“ Mrs. Karuski cold-bloodedly confessed that as 
soon as she heard of Rhodes’s opposition, she began 
to plan to put him out of the way. She carefully 
plotted the crime to make sure that suspicion would 
not fall on her son. She wired Paul, making the 
appointment with him at six at the hotel in the city, 
suggesting that he spend the night there, so as to 


TWO DISCOVERIES 267 

be sure of being on time. She made certain that he 
thus would be out of the way and unsuspected. 

“ With a rifle that Paul had had in his military 
equipment, she drove alone in her car from the sani- 
tarium. Through her son’s letters she was already 
pretty well posted on Rhodes’s habits. Arriving in 
Rockmont after nightfall, she hid her car in the 
woods near the club and, unobserved, watched the 
club all evening. After everybody had gone home, 
she reconnoitered, getting into the building by the 
window in the directors’ room. From the club she 
telephoned to Rhodes and asked him to meet her at 
the clubhouse at once. Rhodes, always sensitive on 
the subject of his insane wife and intent on keeping 
the story from Mollie, naturally was worried and 
alarmed and hastened to the club to meet her. Slip- 
ping up on the piazza, she shot him through the 
window and then crept in and fired off his own re- 
volver, trying to make it look like suicide.’* 

“ But the note he was writing ” 

“Apparently that escaped her notice. She said 
nothing about it in her confession.” 

“ Conchita must have been snooping around, then, 
and discovered it and didn’t know what to do with 


268 TRAGEDY AT THE BEACH CLUB 


it and mailed it to Mollie, trying to do something 
that would bring a break with Paul, I guess, so that 
she could get him back. ,, 

“ Probably. At any rate, Mrs. Karuski, after the 
murder, drove on into the city, throwing the rifle 
away in some body of water she passed, she doesn’t 
know just where. She kept her appointment with 
her son. She said nothing whatever to him about 
what she had done but tried to cheer him up, insist- 
ing that he go right on with his plans to marry 
Mollie.” 

“ What a terrible person she must be,” said Kit, 
shuddering. 

“ More than likely her work with the insane has 
turned her brain. They tell me that quite frequently 
doctors and attendants in sanitariums become un- 
balanced through constant association with the in- 
sane.” 

“Anyhow,” said Kit, " I’m glad that Paul won’t 
marry Mollie. I always thought, Bill, that some 
day you and she would get married.” 

“ No chance,” said Tilt, by no means as unhappily 
as he might have said it two or three weeks before. 
" She hasn’t spoken to me for days, and I don’t 


TWO DISCOVERIES 


269 

think she’ll ever forgive me. It wouldn’t surprise 
me if she married Devan some day. They’ve been 
awful thick lately.” 

“ I’m sorry, Bill,” said Kit impulsively, laying 

her hand on his. “ I know you ” 

“ Forget it,” said Tilt, seizing Kit’s hands in his 
and looking boldly into her suddenly flushed face. 
“ If I ever marry into the Manners family, it won’t 

be Mollie. It’ll be ” 

“ Oh, Bill,” cried the Terrible Kit, a wonderful 
soft light transforming her great black eyes, and joy 
beaming in her transfigured face, “ it isn’t really 
true. It can’t be me that you love — really ? ” 

“ It certainly is,” said Bill, masterfully and man- 
fully, wondering as he caught her in his arms why 
he never before had wanted to kiss those wonderful 
lips of hers, wondering when it was, or how it had 
come about, that right under his very eyes, without 
his ever having noticed it, the Terrible Kit all at 
once had become a beautiful woman, — the only 
woman for him. 




N ON* REF LP T 











Novels by 

WILLIAM JOHNSTON 


‘'LIMPY” 

“Somebody might have written a truer, sweeter, more appeal- 
ing, more convincing story of a boy than ‘Limpy’, but nobody 
ever has.” — Irvin S. Cobb. 

“Characterized by very evident truth, sincerity of purpose, and 
a most delightful style.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 

“A sincere intimate study of boyhood, written with introspec- 
tive tenderness.” — Los Angeles Times. 

Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. 


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 

“Mr. Johnston ought to write more tales of this kind.” — PMa- 
delphia Public Ledger. 

“A story quite as good in its way as ‘Limpy’, but very dif- 
ferent. ’ ’ — Brooklyn Eagle. 

“The plot is unusual and the tale well told.” — Chicago Even- 
ing Post. 

Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. 


THE APARTMENT NEXT DOOR 

“A lively and absorbing yarn, which holds one’s interest from 
first to last.” — New York Sun. 

“A most absorbing story, with a surprising climax.” — St. Louis 
Globe-Democrat. 

“Mr. Johnston has written a very successful story.” — San 
Francisco Argonaut. 

Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. 


THE MYSTERY IN THE RITSMORE 

“A tale of mystery, adventure, surprises and thrills that has few 
equals.” — Boston Globe. 

“A cleverly told and thrilling story.” — Pittsburgh Gazette-Times. 
Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. 


LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, Boston 






























































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